Hi guys, this is the masterlist for all the fic I am writing and will be writing in the future.
Until now, I have only written for Stray kids and may change in the future!
Enjoy Reading!
(Remember, this is a work of fiction, not real life.)
-----SKZ-----
FATED POLYOHONY
Synopsis-
Soulmates.
Everyone has a soulmate. Most people spend their entire lives trying to find the person written for them by fate, believing that destiny just takes time. But I was hanging on a thin wire between patience and fear, trying to trust the timing of the universe.
That was before I met them—at the most unexpected time, in the most chaotic way—turning my ordinary life completely upside down.
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Christmas and the New Year passed without anything out of place. I spent Christmas with my grandparents in Busan along with Ji Young. We stayed there for three days before returning and celebrating New Year’s by ourselves in her apartment.
The school reopened after the break with a parent-teacher conference on tow. By the time April hits, Ji Young is back in Japan for filming and almost done, and I was busy racing against the clock trying to cover up the portions for the exams for the juniors and prepping the seniors, most of whom will be taking SATs and AP exams this year. Some students were sent to me for tutoring for IELTS. It was physically and emotionally taxing most of the time.
My soulmates were as busy as me, it seems. Most of the time we talked, they seemed as exhausted as I was, so I didn’t push it much. The few weeks after that talk, it was a bit awkward to say the least. But it got better with time as I openly asked about the rest of them every once in a while to really show that I was fine with it. We talked daily but kept it short and sweet for most of the time, and some banter with my artist. The random pains and sore body kept making an appearance every once in a while, and I have grown to ignore that for the better half of the time. Other times, I take pain medicine that seems to have found its home in my home and on my school desk too. Given how busy my soulmates and I got, I still haven’t told them about the possible pain bond; I didn’t want to stress them out, and still not sure if it’s their youngest; it could be anyone.
The bloody nightmare I had didn’t make an appearance after that night, which I am thankful for. It was replaced by some random dreams of the Stray Kids members so often these days; I complained to myself about my unhealthy obsession with their music so bad they make an appearance in my dreams regularly. I used to get dreams like these all the time in the past, but it was rare; now it’s increased to every other day.
“I cannot believe my score dipped so low,” cried one of the students sitting in front of me. I reviewed and compared the marks she scored before speaking, “This isn’t that bad; you only lost 2 points, that too in the reading section.”
“But still!”
“Remember I told you that I specifically made this paper a level higher than the exams; you only lost 2 points in this. It’s a guarantee that you will score high in the actual exams,” I explained to her, but she still didn’t look convinced and looked like on the verge of breaking down and crying.
I sighed, “Here is what I will do: I have a bunch of different question papers with me. I will give them to you to solve every other day, and then you should submit them after completing, ok?”
God! Yes…I will if I survive my mother’s rants about this mark.” She mumbled. I smiled sympathetically at her, “Should I call her?”
“Nope, it’s fine, thank you again. I have classes to attend.” She then bowed and left the room after taking the small candies we keep for students in the room.
As the final bell of the day rang through the school, students as well as teachers rushed to get home for the weekend after a long week of work.
“Ms. Kim!” Called out a voice from behind. I closed my eyes for a second and wished it wasn’t another work assignment to finish during the weekend. I turned around to find the source of the voice sprinting at high speed among the students walking to catch up to me. He stood in front of me, heaving before grinning, showing his teeth.
Those all-too-familiar dimples on someone’s face. The exact one I have been seeing on the person who kept appearing in my dreams.
“Lucas Bhang, be careful. You could have fallen from that speed!” I chided him lightly. “What is it that you came running like Usain Bolt through the school grounds?”
“My bad, you were walking fast, so I thought I couldn’t catch up fast enough. About the worksheet the weekend, when do we get it?” I looked at him in confusion.
“You want worksheets? Why? You scored the highest in the class. In my opinion, you just have to focus on essays; don’t stick to similar topics, switch in between…” I advised him.
“Can I have at least one worksheet? I got to solve it and show my mom that going to my brother’s last concert this weekend doesn’t topple my grades.” He rushed his words off. At my raised eyebrows, he realised his mistake of mentioning his brother. That rarely ever happens, as he was careful not to let anything out, terrified someone would leak it to the press.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“If you say so..” I rummaged through my bag and pulled out a folder of worksheets. I held one out and handed it to him.
“I can’t believe you have all this ready every time,” he said in awe. “Well, you kinda act like my brother sometimes, so responsible. So mature,” he trailed off, counting all the possible good traits he could come up with standing there.
I snorted at his comment. If he had seen ‘the responsible Ms.kim’ in her home on weekends with hair so wild and clothes so mismatched, he would have taken back the words, wishing he hadn’t uttered such good-quality words to describe.
I gently nudged him toward his sister, who was waiting to pick him up. She comes rarely to pick him up from school. It’s usually his mother.
“Did you meet my sister yet?” He questioned as he took his time walking to the gate.
“Not yet; it’s only important to meet the parents, not the entire family,” I commented.
“Then you should definitely meet her!!” He exclaimed excitedly before waving his sister over.
“You must be Ms. Kim, right? I heard a lot about you. I am Hannah, his only sister,” I returned her bow before shaking her extended hand.
“It’s nice to meet you; I am his English teacher for this year. My name is Kim Da-Hee.” After introducing myself, I retracted my hand.
I looked at Lucas, who had suddenly turned quiet, and saw him staring at my inner wrist.
“That’s a cool tattoo!” He suddenly pointed it out. I knew what he was pointing at and laughed it off without any other comments. I pulled my sleeve down discreetly, making sure he didn’t inspect it any further.
“We have to get going, miss; have a good weekend,” His sister then pulled Lucas along with her. From the distance I could see His sister smacking lightly on his shoulders, which I think was for pointing at the ‘tattoo’ on my wrist.
I then walked towards my car, lightly caressing the said tattoo. It wasn’t even a tattoo; it was a doodle of a moon and sun together. He had even colored it with blue and yellow, respectively. Despite his own reasoning that he couldn’t have any visible ink on his body, he occasionally doodles as if the rules that were set in place were to break one by one.
That night, as usual, I had to take a hot bath for almost an hour because of the consistent sore body that didn’t seem to go away. From that, I knew my soulmate was up to something physically demanding that leaves the body sore for a long time.
—————————————————————————————————————————
At 6 am, I was staring at the ceiling, hoping sleep would come, but to my avail, it did not. I sighed in despair; I wanted to sleep in today, out of all days, because it was a weekend, but it felt like even sleep was on leave on weekends. I huffed in disbelief as my dreams continued to be of stray kids even after I reduced my online involvement. I scrolled past the messages I got while I was asleep, mostly from my sister who was in high school, ranting about her long day and some picture from Ji Young from the sets of the drama she started shooting. I checked in with my soulmates then, assuming from the total static silence with no hums or mumbles, they seemed to be asleep. I stood up after some time, contemplating life choices before finally freshening up for the day. I stretched a bit to figure out if the soreness still persisted, but to my absolute surprise, the soreness had disappeared overnight.
‘That guy must have drunk a heavy dose medicine for it or have god-level healing abilities, ’ I thought to myself, impressed.
After an hour, I found myself in front of a cafe shop that I usually go to on days like these. The days I wake up too early and have a gut feeling something is going to happen, for better or for worse. I entered and ordered a Cappuccino with a sandwich. I sat down at a corner table tucked away from the windows to check the assignments and to enter the marks in the students’ performance sheets. I pulled my earpods in to drown out the chatter of the morning rush.
Two hours into the work, with a second cup of coffee, I was almost done with the bundle. I lightly heard the bell chime at the entrance over the light jazz playing in the earpods. I felt a light pressure and tugging at my right hand that was holding the pen. I turned to look at the side, expecting some kid or a pet tugging on my sleeve or hand, but to my surprise there wasn’t anything. As the seconds ticked by, the tugging only increased bit by bit, pulling harder and harder, making it impossible to ignore and return to my work. Brushing it off as my soulmate’s pain or pressure, I readjusted my grip on the pen, hoping the pressure would go away, but it started tugging harder, almost desperate.
Finally having enough of it, I pulled my earpods away and decided to go to the counter to ask for a refill of coffee again. As I walked away from the corner to the counter, all I could feel was the tugging, but it was accompanied by something else too: a warm feeling that travelled up from my pinkie finger to my hand to my entire body. It felt as if finally basking in the sun for the first time after being cooped up inside the cold forever. I started to feel light, as if all the worries of everything accumulated over the last months were starting to drift away into a distant buzz. It was as if I could fly amongst the clouds with no worries in the world. It was an euphoric feeling that I don’t want to get rid of.
With the intense feeling, my steps gradually slowed down to a crawl across the middle of the cafe, lost in that intense feeling. The more I stepped forward, the more the feelings increased. It was as if my feet were pushing me to their desired place. I blinked my eyes to focus as I stood near the counter waiting for the barista to make the refill.
Standing by, leaning into the counter for support, I felt a burning sensation of someone’s eyes on me. I turned around and scanned the surroundings to see who. The man who caught my attention had an oversized hoodie with a black cap pulled back enough to see his eyes through the shadow and a mask pushed to his chin. I met his startled eyes as I returned the gaze.
Those eyes… I know those eyes…The eyes that are too frequent in my day-to-day dreams at night, the eyes I knew by heart by the sheer amount of time I had seen them. That curve of his eyes, eyelashes framing them. I know that face too, the face that looks so real in dreams, standing in front of me in reality. Chan…….. Bang Chan. The face I spend hours admiring in the dreams and then beating myself over it, telling myself I am too engaged in the fan media.
The warmth that spread through didn’t decrease but instead increased as we stood near the counter, gazing at each other. The outside world faded away in that moment; the only thing that existed was me and that guy. I tore my eyes away from him, hoping I wasn’t being considered weird for gawking at him in the middle of the cafe. Though I doubt that. I quickly took the cup the barista placed in front of me, mumbling a thank you before fleeing to my place in the corner.
‘What was that? What even was that feeling?’ I thought to myself. But the intense euphoric sensation didn’t stop; it continued to course through me, keeping my heart pumping at an unusual and dangerous speed. I was sitting there trying to decipher the meaning of it, but no relevant answers came to my mind.
Was that the feeling of meeting your soulmate, as I have read in the articles?
“Get a grip! An international idol as soulmate?” I scoffed at myself for thinking along those lines, but my eyes automatically scanned the cafe to catch another sight of him, just to prove myself wrong. He was still there, turned away from her towards the counter.
‘This is crazy, I have completely gone crazy,’ I laughed at myself at the absurdity of the thoughts. To make sure, I checked in with my telepath, but he seemed to be asleep, and I didn’t find a message or good morning on my hands by the artist like he does every morning. I raised the pen again to resume the marking where I left off, but the desperate tugging and pulling didn’t stop; if anything, it just increased.
I adjusted my grip on the pen again and again, trying to mark the paper, but in vain; the pen just hovered over the paper without any ink. My gaze involuntarily flicked back around the cafe, hoping to catch a glance of him again. Disappointment filled me when I couldn’t find him near the counter where I spotted him before.
A familiar but tentative voice broke through my searching,“Excuse me..”. At that, I turned my head so fast I might have felt a sharp pain in my neck if I wasn’t so surprised to see who called me out.
“Yes?”
Standing right beside my table was the man in the hoodie who was near the counter before, Bang Chan…Now with him physically so much closer than before, the dizzing warmth and the tingling sensation that surged through me before increased tenfold, making it almost impossible to brush it off. The tugging of my hand didn’t stop either, keeping up with the same desperate pull. I clenched my fist to hide the twitch of my pinky finger because of the pull of an unknown source
“Can I talk to you for a second?” He asked with his voice small, as he pointed his right hand to the chair opposite me, asking for permission to sit. I nodded my head, not trusting mt voice enough to speak right now.
As he took the seat opposite me, I gathered the stray papers and marksheets that were spread out all through the table. He didn’t say anything while I arranged the remaining papers, which gave me some time to think about what this was about.
Maybe my top student, Lucas Bhang, told his brother about me? That would make sense; I met all the members of the family except the older brother he deliberately keeps out of his conversation with everyone, except for some slip-ups here and there. But there is no actual reason to talk outside the school for him.
‘What if he felt that pull too? Maybe that’s why he is here?’
“Sorry, it’s a mess here; I was working,” I said as I sat in my chair facing him. He pulled on a quick smile before muttering, “No problem.”
He didn’t say anything more, and I didn’t ask. He had this look on his face where he was thinking about what to say, his lips pressed to a line and downward, the fingers flexing, a small tilt in his head to the left side, debating what to say.
In the meantime, I took a sip of the coffee and waited. My eyes dropped to his hands that were fidgeting ever since sitting here. Looking more closely, I could actually see that he wasn’t fidgeting at all; it was more like a slight twitch of his pinky finger of his right hand to the side.. That looks suspiciously like how I have it. Before I could point it out, he interrupted,
“I just wanted to make sure of one thing, hope I am not too blunt with it”
“Sure, go on.” I muttered, my eyes fixed on him. But what came out of his mouth next was something I didn’t expect at all.
“I-uh.. Did you happen to feel something at all back there? Like a pull on your hand or a tug?”
ᯓᡣ𐭩 a three-part series
ᯓᡣ𐭩 max verstappen x ex!reader
ᯓᡣ𐭩 second-chance romance, secret baby/pregnancy, dad!max x mom!reader
ᯓᡣ𐭩 based on a request made by my best friend @freddiefromthefandoms (surprise, freds!)
ᝰ.ᐟ After having to walk away from the love of her life, she reluctantly returns to the paddock with her Formula One-obsessed toddler, whose biggest dream is to meet Max Verstappen, the hero he's adored his entire life and the father he's never known, with the very same impossible angel eyes.
“…Ji Young, I am afraid. What if-” I choked on the word, unable to bring it out. “What if I speak up about it and I know it may not happen, but what if I…get rejected?” I whispered the last part, my hand gripping the table a bit too tightly.
“What? They wouldn’t. They are scared, thinking that the stability they found now will tip over. Think about it, they are grown men; they know the consequences if they reject you, and maybe who knows? There might be more to the decision they took, or they included you in that decision, saying that you will be the last one…” Ji Young reasons, her words jumbling together in the panic.
Of course, everyone panics at the thought of soulmate rejection; it’s basically a death-guaranteed action for everyone involved with little to no medical treatment, more dangerous to the person who was rejected. There are many registered deaths because of it. Of course, there are people who have lived past that rejection, but it’s very rare, like one in five years kind of rare. The death, or almost death, situation arises when one party involved is not ready for the rejection or still carries love and feelings for the other. It’s basically suicide for them. The handful of people who lived past that rejection either have completely fallen out of love or stripped out of that emotion for life.
I know which category I would fit into if I do get rejected; it will basically be immediate death. The longing, the life I dreamt of with them, the future I envisioned for us would be my demise, my downfall. And Ji Young knows the statistics of both the rejection and my ending if it ever comes to it.
“Emma, they wouldn’t, I know,” she insisted.
“How would you even know…” I whispered in despair. “By the talk of it, they are willing to do anything to protect themself after the scare of one of them collapsing. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they decided on that..”
“They aren’t murderers, babe; they are just protecting what they have now before things get worse between them, yea? It’s just their way of preservation, a twisted way but preservation. They are terrified of breaking whatever they have with time, like freeze the time before the bond tips over again. They know the price to pay for the cosmic death. They wouldn’t do that to you; humans aren’t built to kill for no reason.” She fiercely said to me, squeezing my hand.
She continued in a whisper after a pause, “And if that day when you are pushed aside comes, come to the home you have here. If they reject you, let them. I am more than willing to nurse you back to health in that case; I already went through that hell once, and I am not afraid to walk back to that hell just to save you again. You are a daughter and a best friend before becoming their soulmate; you will always have us on your side no matter what. So, keep your chin up high and live. We can’t forever be afraid of what’s written for us..”
All I felt after hearing that was relief and gratitude for her. If she wasn’t here now, I could have driven myself to the wall by questioning and overthinking everything. I pulled her up with more force than I had used before and hugged her tightly. She hugged me back as tightly as I did. I could still feel a slight tremble of her arms wrapped around me, but said nothing, noting how hard she tried to hide it before.
“When did my Ji-Youngie become so wiseee?” I teased her after some time had ticked by. She pulled back with a snort and wiped her eyes aggressively before answering me.
“Oh please! I was always the wise one out of us, well, most of the time. Today I had to pull myself and bring some wiseness from my ancestors”
I let out a small laugh; at that Ji Young joined in too. After that talk, the suffocating weight in my chest started to loosen, allowing me to breathe more easily and think more clearly without the cosmic dread coming up every few thoughts. Humans tend to protect what they treasure most when threatened, so that may explain their reaction to the youngest one. At that time, he was at risk because they only saw him suffering due to the late bond awakening. Well, what if introducing me to the bond now, when the youngest is fragile bears a risk for me too? What if that’s the reason for pushing me away?
The only way to figure out what exactly happened was talking to them both, but that thought itself brings up bitterness, resentment, and hurt; it will take some days off and time to bring it up without the urge to cry at the thought itself. Maybe if they find out about my situation in February, there might be a situation like this happening.
“Now that is solved,” she started. I looked at her, questioning, and she rephrased her sentence, “Well, now it’s almost clear about their intention with their decision; you can stop dwelling on it and freshen up; you look like a Victorian ghost that came to life to haunt me.”
I grimaced at her words, “Do I look that bad?”
“Yes,” She replied without any consideration.
“Then I will take a bath too. Make yourself at home; it will take some time.” I told her as I made my way to the bedroom to pick out clothes.
“You don’t have to sayy” She shouted from the living room as she plopped down on the couch.
After what I felt like the longest and hottest shower of my life, I finally felt clean and refreshed. Like stripped away from the ghosts of the pain and the fears that haunted me until now. I stood in front of the fogged-up mirror and wiped it to look at myself clearly.
‘Maybe Ji Young has a point; I really look like a ghost with resentment that came to scare people off,” I thought as I looked at my puffy eyes, skin drained of color, and pale lips. A sick Victorian child more like. I stood there for some minutes doing skincare. Since I went to bed yesterday without even considering it, I took extra time and care with every step.
At the end, I looked more like a human than a sick child. The swelling of my eyes has reduced slightly, and I hope it goes down fully before dinner, and my face and lips regain some color. I quickly dressed up in a big sweater with baggy pants as the weather was too unforgiving this time around
I was out of the bathroom door when I felt a pointed pressure against my mental shield- the telepath poking around. No doubt checking in on me after I only gave a small and brief explanation before shutting them off. I could feel a tingling sensation on my skin as the artist started questioning something, more likely about whether I was okay. I had a very big urge to just break the walls down and scream and demand answers for the questions I have and about the fear of rejection, but instead I said nothing, hoping there was much more to what they admitted through the bond, as Ji Young had said.
I cleared my head and slipped to our shared place in my mind, shielding my own space in fear the emotional turmoil I had with Ji Young would leak through. “I am here and fine; I couldn’t finish work the day before and had to finish it,” I explained, my voice flat and neutral, trying to keep my emotions tight so they don’t raise suspicions.
Lying to them feels wrong on all levels. But until I can formulate words and questions, until then, this is the only way out, and I pray they won’t point it out.
“I can feel the heaviness of the emotions on your side you sealed off. If there is something wrong, just tell me.” He insisted with me. I could feel the sharp tingling sensation again on my arm and looked to find the artist asking the same question.
A big lump formed in my mouth at their insistence to solve the problem for me. He questioned as if nothing was wrong. Maybe I mistook or misunderstood what he meant? But how can you find another way to explain what he meant? The irony of the situation is they wanted me to lean into them because of the problem, but that exactly is what is causing the problem.
“I didn’t want to bother you with my problems; it’s related to school, so you know..” I trailed off before continuing, “I slept after talking in the early morning, and the work is still pending.”
“If you say so,” He mumbles, his voice unsure. “But that still doesn’t make you build an iron wall around your mind overnight; did we do something?”
I sighed; he seems to can’t let it go, “You know how fast I get distracted, right? At this rate, I wouldn’t finish grading the papers and will be executed by the principal and parents alike, not the cosmic fate or stuff.”
“Executed by cosmic fate?” He wondered. I closed my eyes for a second, knowing that I had let it slip out.
“Love..” He called out in a soft tone, calling me the nickname he had adapted over the years. That almost made my resolve crumble and confess everything, hoping there is a mistake in what I understood. “If it’s about what we told you yesterday about our bond, please let us explain more. I know you might be upset, so let me clear up the mistake…”
“Yeah? What are you going to explain? How the decision I was also supposed to make about my life and bonds was taken by somebody else? Or the fact that I will get rejected if I come near you guys because you are scared your youngest will get sick?” I paused, letting out a drawn-out laugh, “That is not exactly what I want to hear now; I would rather just ignore the situation.”
I could feel realization draw into him at my words; I guess now he is really thinking about the mess they made about the decision concerning my life. “It’s not like that-”
“Please don’t. I don’t want to cry again about it. Let’s just forget it ever happened. We can continue to talk if you want, and I will stay out of the way where I know people in the music industry frequent so I don’t accidentally run into you until you want me around physically.” I spit out the words, my voice rising beyond normal what I usually use to communicate.
What followed after my outburst was an unadulterated big silence. I would feel the telepath trying to find words through the stutter and the frantic tingling of the pen pressed against my skin and not writing anything. I could feel horror wash over my mind, leaking from his side. Until now, they haven’t realised the protective shield they build between us is like a slow rejection taking place even without their straightforward ones.
“It’s not like that; it was never like that. We didn’t mean it like that,” his voice cracked in the middle.
“It’s fine, forget it, I understand..Besides, I am only bonded to two of you from the group; meeting me now is bound to make you fall out. Just forget it. We can still talk every day.” I dismissed.
“But it’s not right? Love, it was not rejection, never rejection. I need you with me. We promised! So please don’t just push us out. I really didn’t want you to be included in the crossfire of the late bond.” He begged, his voice strained. “I am sorry if my words hurt you; I never meant it in any way other than to protect you…”
“Protect me? By keeping me in the dark forever about the possibility that I may never have the chance to meet you?” I questioned as my voice cracked. I could feel my own heart hammering against my ribs as I tried to keep my cool and not cry without getting a chance to explain.
“Oh- I am sorry; I didn’t think that far enough. It was my fault. I am so sorry.I thought it was the only way to save you from backlash if the bond acts up again, but keeping a distance.. I thought that if we would meet physically at last, the bonding we would have to go through like all soulmates have and his backlash at the time would take you too away from us…..” His voice was small, like that of a scolded child. I could feel the realization, the silent plea to understand, the desperation clawing its way out through the bond.
The reaction from them is as if they have never truly realized the impact their decision will have on the other bond outside the circle while trying to protect the ones inside the circle.
Ji Young was right; this was their twisted way of self-preservation. Them thinking of only the short term without any regard for what happens in the long run.
“We never wanted another breakout from the bond itself in a short time; I don’t think both of you would have survived if so… We were terrified another February will happen, but to both of you this time. I was stupid enough to think ignoring it would make it go away…”
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you about the decision. We decided when the fire was too hot after the incident. I was too scared after that, so I acted too hastily. I-”
“It’s fine, you don’t have to explain anymore. I get it. You were just thinking about the short term. I am still a bit upset about it, I guess; I felt as if I was left inside a dark room, unable to control my own life. I hate that…” I explained.
“Just don’t keep me in the dark about it anymore. I am also a part of your bond, so please tell me if there are any discussions based on my bond with you both. Let me carry it too, you don’t have to fix it all by yourself.” The sharp bitterness softened a little as I sighed out.
“And I am sorry too, for assuming the worst from you..”
“It’s okay, I am sure it will be the same reaction if we told someone else like this too and I promise to tell you anything that might happen regarding this,” he comforted. His voice was still soft, laced with lingering guilt and relief.
“Thank you. I will talk to you both later; I still have work to finish and a dinner reservation at 8pm. soo…bye?” I prompted. He also bid goodbye to me, saying he was also busy today.
“Emma, please tell me you’re okay there; if you had become a Victorian ghost, I would have to register this place as haunted to warn people,” Ji Young shouts from the hallway.
“I am fine, but wouldn’t you stay with me if I became a ghost Ji Young-ah? I thought we were best friends?” I teased her as I returned to the hallway to find her sprawled on the couch watching the T.V. I sat at the table to finish the remaining work before school tomorrow.
“And miss out the chance of meeting the love of my life? Nahhh, I will pass,” she replied with a very unamused tone, not tearing her eyes away from the program that was running on the t.v.
“Guess what?” I asked her after the lunch she forced into my throat after I confessed I wasn’t hungry.
“What” she asked as she plopped another piece of apple into my mouth. I stared at her, who was too busy peeling oranges now.
“I can eat myself, thanks.”
“But you don’t eat it by yourself.”
“Am I a child for you to feed?” I wondered out loud. At that, she gave me an unimpressed look that said everything her mouth didn’t. She held up an orange piece closer to my mouth.
“Okay fine, point noted.” I rolled my eyes as I bit into the piece.
“The telepath pushed his way into my mind to clear things up..” I explained softly to her. She looked up to me, surprised, but she didn’t say anything, giving me space to continue.
“He said they really didn’t think about it far enough; the discussion was taken when they all were too wounded from the events.”
“Yeah? Glad that got explained. But Emma, how do you feel about it?” She asks cautiously, pausing the peeling and looking at me.
I let out a laugh at that, a big laugh you let out when all your worries are washed away, and the weight lifts off my shoulders. “It feels good actually,” I paused before smiling at her, “You were right, he said that that discussion was taken right after the bond flare that happened, so he wasn’t thinking straight. He apologised, and I guess it was when I pointed it out he realised how messed up it was; I could literally feel the horror and realisation from his side when I explained, you know?” I rambled to her. I took a deep breath and continued,
“He apologised too… And promised not to keep me out again even if he felt it was to protect me..” I whispered. At that, Ji Young let out a big sigh of relief, her shoulders which were upright shagging slightly.
“Good for him. I was about to research how to slap a soulmate of a friend through a bond, actually..” She jokes as she laughs. At that, I couldn’t help but join in.
“But the backlash in February feels entirely too familiar, don’t you think?” She asks the question hesitantly as if testing the waters. The laughter died down as I stared at her, questioning.
“hmm?”
“The youngest one’s collapse and yours too, don’t you think they are connected?” she asks me, but unfortunately for her, I didn’t have the answer.
I swallowed another orange slice before answering, “About that..”
“Yeah? Go on,” she prompted me to continue as she grew impatient
“I had a doubt actually, last week in Busan I had this random pain that made me want to curl up, and Min Jun oppa asked if it was a pain bond… I didn’t think much of it then. But the more I looked into it, the more it made sense: random pain and shocks even though I did nothing heavy that day and a sore body most of the time. And the February incident too, I asked when the youngest’s birthday date was in February after he mentioned it, but you know how the bond gets; it got all noisy with the high-frequency sound.” I finally confessed to her about what Min-Jun said about the random pain.
“Hold up, babe. Are you saying what I think you are saying?”
“I think so. That would honestly explain the pains and sore body.” I explained to her, monotoned. She dropped the knife in her hands and stared at me with wide eyes and parted lips, probably questioning why I hadn’t mentioned it before.
“I wasn’t sure, but after the talk with them, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence anymore, you know? So like he might be my soulmate too….”
“That’s possible…” she sounded unsure at best. She then asked, “That would make you have four, right? The tattoo, the telepath, the artist, and the pain bond?”
I grimaced at her words. When she put it like that, it felt more real and slightly overwhelming.
“Yea Four..” I muttered as I traced a doodle felt on my skin by my soulmate. “Four isn’t that rare, but it’s unreal to be honest..”
“What I can’t believe is how chill you are about this news,” she exclaimed as she went back to peeling.
“Believe me, I spend hours after the talk getting used to it. Now I am just letting fate do its work. Who knows? Maybe we just calculated it wrong about the pain, and I am really getting old.” I joked.
“Sure” She snorted and then pointed to the papers in front of me to finish off before going out.
By 7:30, both of us were out of my house ready to go for dinner. We wore formal clothes because, according to her, it is a high-end restaurant. I wore a black turtleneck paired with a skirt that went past my knees with high heels, which I am going to regret by the end of this night. Ji Young stuck with a dark blue blouse with white wide-legged pants. We paired it with coats because no one is surviving without one in this cold.
We drove there and reached just in time for the reservation she booked. The place is exactly like what she had warned; expensive, high-end, dimly lit, and everyone in formal. The next hour and a half was spent on eating new dishes we wanted to try, catching up on the details she didn’t mention before, and just talking. We deliberately stayed away from the topic of soulmates, considering the sheer amount of time we discussed it this month compared to the rest of this year.
“I still can’t believe we used to get scammed to get into those clubs for extra credits!” Ji Young laughed at our 19 year old self’s stupidity.
“It was plausible. Remember, even the seniors feel for it, but later, when there is no way out, they had to beg to be pulled out.” I added, joining in her laugh.
“Remember the time we went to the uni in the rain just because they said that the project we should contribute will guarantee you will pass, but the uni was closed on that day?”
“How can I even forget that?” I asked back sarcastically. “You left out the best part, we didn’t even get in! We even got cold because of standing in the rain..God, we were broke and desperate!” I added, pointing the fork towards her, completely forgetting high-end restaurant etiquette. She laughed even harder at that reminder.
“It’s really a blessing we made it this far in another country without any mistakes.”
“I guess we peaked from there. It is really moments like these that make me realise we grew a lot, right? Both personally and professionally.” She added after thinking for a while. She was right.
If someone told 18-year-old Emmaline Reeves and Seo Ji Young that they will be best friends and eventually move to Korea together for a full-time job and succeed, they would have laughed at their faces because it was too far-fetched. No one would believe that the both 18 year olds who bonded over the scam uni club would be sitting in a restaurant as high school teacher in an international school and a producer who is signed to film a series with star-studded actors in Japan. Life really does wonders.
“It’s all thanks to you, you know?” She added quietly, picking up the final piece of steak left on her plate. The waiter then came to exchange our plates with desserts that looked too good to eat at the moment.
“No, don’t say it like that,” I denied, knowing exactly where this conversation was leading.
“Can’t I even be honest and be thankful? If it weren’t for you, I would have been in some mental asylum if not dead already.” She asked with a soft smile. We picked up our spoons and started eating the dessert.
“You don’t have to mention it all the time; I did what everyone should have done. It’s nothing big,” I assured her. She snorted at my reasoning. She quietly shook her head and added,
“And no one raised any questions about his behaviour other than you. Your intuition is too good and helped me escape from all that,” she murmured, her eyes turning glossy.
“He was too good with his acting and reasoning; probably would have had a bright future in the film industry if he wasn’t in jail…” At that comment, she let out a small laugh.
“The audacity and courage he had to pose as my soulmate- he had the guts too. Everyone fell for it, even I fell for that,” She whispered, her tone still angry and resentful.
I held her hand. “Ji Young-ah I hope you aren’t beating yourself over it. He was a literal stalker who studied you like a subject to be mastered so intensely that he got away for too long. If someone told me that a person said he saw me in his dreams vividly and for proof tells the secrets you kept even from your family and friends, I would have believed it too, you know?”
She squeezed my hand and, “I know, but no one expected that to happen; to use something written just for us against us is plain cruel for anyone to even think of let alone do.”
“Good thing he is behind the bar; honestly, I never liked him. Ji Young, you won over that; you are here successful, but he is there in jail, imprisoned for life and filled with fines he probably cannot pay back in this lifetime. So cheers to us!!” I exclaimed as I raised my glass.
She huffed a laugh before clicking glasses with me, “To us”
After dessert, we visited a stationery shop almost hidden from plain view, the ones you could only find it if someone told you or looked close enough. It was one of the shops everyone passes without a second glance. Ji Young brought the things she wanted as I browsed through the items.
‘I should really come back next time; there are loads of stuff here for a lower price,’ I thought to myself as I checked out the prices of oil paints. It was a quarter of the price I usually pay for.
After spending almost half an hour, I drove us back home in complete silence except for the song they played on the radio. I bid goodbye to Ji Young as we parted ways on our way to our respective rooms. I checked in with my soulmate about my return and bid goodnight before crashing into bed, hoping that the next day turns out to be better than today.
“It’s a Monday, nothing goes to plan,” my subconscious whispered before sleep finally pulled me under.
Hii guyss...This is the end of chapter 11! hope you guys enjoyed it!
Also they cleared the misunderstanding between them , so far its good to go!
There is another thing: I literally gave my character a name, but it was like an askz x reader fic in my mind, as I posted before, so this basically becomes a 'skz x oc,' right? I didn't notice it or give it much thought as I named her, and I randomly remembered this mistake. I am sincerely sorry for it..
Anyways, dont forget to drop a comment on either this chapter or the series!
Summary: Anything written on your skin appears on your soulmate’s, leaving you to wonder whether your destiny can still be rewritten.
A/N: these fuckass summaries are gonna be the death of me... also i really enjoyed planning for this fic but now that i've done my final read i actually kinda hate it
Year 2:
Soulmates were a tricky business.
No one fully understood the magic behind it—how the universe could possibly decide, from the moment you were born, that there was one person out there meant specifically for you. Even now, it remained one of the greatest mysteries of the magical world. There were no rules you could study, no spells to influence it, no way to predict it.
All anyone really knew was this: somewhere out there existed a person whose magic matched yours so perfectly that the universe itself would one day intervene and make it known.
How it chose to do that, however, was entirely unpredictable.
Some people were born with timers on their wrists, ticking down to the exact second they would meet the person meant for them. Others lived their entire lives in muted shades of grey until they met their soulmate and the world burst into colour all at once. Some carried their soulmate’s first words etched permanently into their skin, waiting for the moment they would finally hear them spoken aloud.
For others, it came later.
Marks that appeared on first touch.
Marks that only revealed themselves after years of friendship.
Marks that didn’t appear at all until it was far too late to matter.
There was no pattern. No certainty. No way to guess what form your own bond would take—or when it would appear, or who it would tie you to.
And so, by your second year, you had stopped thinking about it too much.
Well... not entirely.
Like any other girl, there were nights when you lay awake staring at the ceiling, letting your mind wander to the inevitable moment when it would happen. You imagined the first meeting in painstaking detail—how everything would fall into place like the final pieces of a puzzle, how suddenly the world would make sense in a way it never had before, as if you had finally found where you were meant to be.
You imagined what it would feel like to be close to them.
To hold their hand.
To kiss them.
To run your fingers through their hair and feel them do the same to you.
You imagined quiet moments and laughter, whispered words meant only for the two of you, a future that felt certain in a way nothing else ever did.
And sometimes, buried into your pillow so no one could hear, you’d find yourself smiling—giddy with anticipation for a life that hadn’t even begun yet.
But it was easy not to dwell on it too much.
None of your friends had found their soulmates yet—not Hermione, not anyone—and that made it easier. It meant you weren’t falling behind. It meant there was still time.
When it happened, it would happen.
And when it did, everything would make sense.
Until then, your biggest problem remained your exams.
The Great Hall was silent in that suffocating, unnatural way it only ever was during exams.
Rows upon rows of desks stretched endlessly beneath the enchanted ceiling, each one placed with careful precision—far enough apart to make cheating impossible, close enough to remind you that you weren’t alone in your misery. The usual warmth of the hall felt stripped away, replaced by something rigid and tense.
The only sound was the uneven scratching of quills against parchment, echoing faintly in the vast space like a hundred tiny clocks ticking out your time.
You hunched over your Transfiguration paper, brow furrowed in concentration, your hand moving quickly but carefully—fast enough to keep up with your thoughts, slow enough to avoid smudging the ink.
You were on the last question.
Finally.
Relief flickered through you as you exhaled quietly, adjusting your grip on your quill. You leaned in slightly, beginning to write your answer, already thinking about how quickly you could leave once you were done—how good it would feel to be free of the stifling silence, the pressure, the weight of it all.
A shadow fell across your desk.
Your quill stilled mid-word.
“Miss (Y/N).” Came Professor McGonagall’s voice, low and composed.
You looked up sharply, your pulse jumping.
She stood just behind you, posture as straight as ever, hands folded neatly behind her back. Her expression gave nothing away—no irritation, no warmth, just that familiar, impenetrable calm.
“Yes, Professor?” You whispered, instinctively lowering your voice to be mindful of your fellow classmates. The last thing you needed was Hermione scolding you after the exam for making a ruckus while she was trying to focus.
Her gaze flicked briefly to your paper, lingering for just a moment, before returning to your face.
“I’ll need you to come with me.” She said quietly.
Your stomach dropped.
“Now, please.”
For a second, you just stared at her.
Confusion hit first—sharp and immediate.
Had you done something wrong? That didn’t make any sense. You hadn’t even finished your exam yet. Your eyes darted down to your parchment, then back up at her.
“…my exam—?”
“I will take it with us.” She replied smoothly, already reaching forward.
Before you could protest, she lifted the parchment from your desk, your unfinished answer still drying on the page. You stared up at her in surprise, your quill still clutched in your fingers, ink well sitting open on the desk.
Something wasn’t right.
Slowly, you pushed your chair back, the scrape of its legs against the stone floor sounding far too loud in the heavy silence. A few heads turned at the noise—quick, curious glances—but just as quickly snapped back down to their work.
After all these were your final exams, they didn't have the time for their focus to be broken.
Your heart began to beat a little faster as you stood, a faint, uneasy feeling settling in your chest.
“Follow me.”
You trailed after her down the narrow aisle between the desks, acutely aware of every step you took, every eye you could feel flicking toward you before darting away again.
The large doors of the Great Hall loomed ahead, growing closer with every step, and with them, that strange, creeping sense that something had shifted.
You didn’t know what you had done.
Still, you bit down hard on the inside of your cheek and clenched your fists at your sides, willing yourself not to cry from sheer anxiety. The past few weeks had already left your nerves stretched painfully thin.
Between late nights revising, early mornings spent cramming information into your head, and the constant pressure hanging over every second-year student during exam season, it felt as though every nerve ending in your body had been stripped raw.
Even now, as you followed Professor McGonagall through the corridors, you could feel your heart hammering painfully against your ribs. You dug your nails into your palms until they hurt, desperately trying to ground yourself, but the growing lump in your throat refused to disappear.
Professor McGonagall led you into an empty classroom adjacent to the Great Hall and quietly shut the door behind you. The click of the latch sounded far louder than it should have.
"Sit."
You obeyed immediately, lowering yourself into the nearest chair while she remained standing. For a long moment she simply looked at you, her expression unreadable save for a distinct note of disappointment that made your stomach sink even further.
"Miss (L/N)," She began, her voice calm and measured, "students are made aware at the beginning of every examination period that cheating results in an immediate Dreadful. Your parents will be notified and the staff will need to discuss whether you will be permitted to sit a reexamination or whether further disciplinary measures are necessary."
For a second, you genuinely thought you had misheard her.
The words didn't make sense.
You stared up at her blankly.
"Professor... what?"
Her expression remained unchanged.
"You were found in possession of examination materials during your Transfiguration exam."
"I wasn't copying."
The denial left your mouth before you could stop it.
McGonagall's gaze lowered pointedly and, confused, you followed it.
The moment you saw your leg, your entire body went cold.
Written across the skin of your calf in cramped black handwriting were notes. Definitions. Theories. Entire sections of information taken directly from your textbooks and condensed into neat little sentences. There had to be dozens of them, stretching across your skin in dense clusters of writing.
Your breath caught painfully in your throat.
"What the hell?"
Your mind immediately began scrambling for an explanation. Had someone done this while you slept? Had ink somehow transferred from your notes? Had you absentmindedly written on yourself during a revision session? None of it made sense. You had showered the night before.
In your panic, you failed to notice that this wasn't even your handwriting.
"No."
You immediately started rubbing at your skin.
"No, Professor, I didn't write this."
You scrubbed harder, panic making your movements frantic.
"I swear I didn't."
The notes didn't budge.
Your palms were beginning to sweat, but the ink remained exactly where it was, stubborn and unmoving.
"It's not even coming off!"
The last few words came out dangerously close to a sob.
You looked back up at McGonagall, your vision beginning to blur around the edges as tears gathered in your eyes. Everything suddenly felt horribly unfair. You had spent weeks preparing for these exams. You had stayed up late memorizing definitions, quizzed yourself until your head hurt, worried yourself sick over every possible outcome.
"I swear I didn't do this, Professor," you said, your voice wobbling despite your best efforts. "I promise. Please don't fail me. I studied so hard."
The tears escaped before you could stop them.
One moment you were trying to hold yourself together and the next you were crying outright, fat tears rolled down your cheeks while the tiny amount of mascara you'd put on that morning in an attempt to look slightly less exhausted began smudging around your eyes. The embarrassment only made it worse. You couldn't remember the last time you had cried in front of a teacher, but now you couldn't seem to stop.
It was only through your tears that you noticed something change in McGonagall's expression. The disappointment that had been there moments ago had vanished completely, replaced by something that looked remarkably like realization. Her eyes flickered briefly from the notes scrawled across your skin back to your face and you watched as the pieces seemed to fall into place behind them.
"Miss (L/N)," She said, her voice considerably gentler than it had been a moment ago, "it would appear that I owe you an apology."
You blinked up at her through watery eyes, still struggling to catch your breath.
"What?"
"I believe there has been a misunderstanding."
For a moment you simply stared at her, the words refusing to make sense. A misunderstanding? Five minutes ago she had been discussing whether you would be forced to repeat the year.
"Once you've composed yourself," McGonagall continued, clearing her throat and smoothing a hand over her robes, "You may return to the examination hall and complete your exam."
The room fell silent.
You looked down at the notes still covering your skin and then back up at her, trying to understand what had changed. The writing was still there. The evidence hadn't disappeared. If anything, it seemed even more obvious now than it had before. Yet whatever conclusion McGonagall had reached was apparently enough to completely alter the situation.
Before you could ask any further questions, however, she was already moving toward the door.
By the time you had managed to stop crying and make yourself somewhat presentable again, your eyes were still red and your cheeks still blotchy. You clutched your exam paper tightly against your chest as you made your way back toward the Great Hall, still trying to piece together what had happened.
The corridor ahead was empty save for two approaching figures.
At first you barely paid them any attention.
Professor Snape was walking briskly in your direction, his dark robes billowing dramatically behind him as they always seemed to. Beside him walked another student, hands shoved into his pockets and expression thunderous enough to make most people step out of his way.
Mattheo Riddle.
At first, you barely paid attention. Then your eyes caught on the black smudges beneath his eyes—dark, uneven streaks that clung to his lashes and marked the skin beneath them. Mascara. Your mascara.
You stopped walking.
Mattheo stopped too.
For a moment, neither of you spoke. The corridor around you felt strangely distant, as though everything else had faded into a muffled blur while the two of you stood suspended in something sharp and disorienting.
His gaze moved over your face, lingering on your red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Slowly—almost visibly—understanding began to settle across both of your expressions at the same time, like the final pieces of a puzzle clicking into place.
The notes that hadn’t been written by you but had appeared on your skin anyway.
The mascara that hadn’t been applied by him but was now smeared across his face.
The reason Professor Snape was escorting him down the corridor.
His expression darkened first.
Yours followed not long after.
You had never met him before. Never spoken to him.
And yet somehow, within minutes of discovering he was your soulmate, Mattheo Riddle had nearly gotten you expelled.
As he continued to glare at you from across the corridor, looking every bit as offended by the situation as you felt, you came to one very simple conclusion.
The universe had an absolutely horrific sense of humour.
Year 6:
It was quiet in the dormitory—far too quiet for a weekday morning.
You frowned slightly, still half-asleep as you burrowed deeper beneath your blankets, turning your face further into the pillow. Usually by now the room would already be alive with noise: drawers slamming shut, sleepy complaints about unfinished homework, someone inevitably losing a sock five minutes before class. But there was none of it. No chatter. No rushing footsteps.
Which could only mean one thing.
You had woken up too early.
A pleased little sigh escaped you as you snuggled further into the warmth of your bed, already drifting back toward sleep. Maybe you had another hour left. Maybe—
“(Y/N) (L/N), FOR GODRIC’S SAKE, WAKE UP! YOU’VE ALREADY MISSED BREAKFAST!”
You bolted upright so fast you nearly headbutted the bedpost.
“WHAT?!” You shrieked, voice rough with sleep as panic shot through you all at once, “Hermione, why didn’t you wake me?!”
“I DID, YOU TEA TOWEL!”
The insult barely registered as you threw your blankets off yourself and stumbled out of bed in a frenzy, hair a complete mess and heart racing with the immediate horror of being late. Your bag was still unpacked from the night before, half your books hanging out of it as you rushed around the room trying to pull yourself together.
“Why didn’t anyone shake me harder?!” You complained, yanking your uniform shirt over your head inside out before realizing and swearing under your breath.
Hermione, already fully dressed and exasperatingly put together, didn’t even look up from stuffing parchment into her bag, “I did! It's not my fault you sleep like the dead.”
You huffed, grabbing your skirt and tugging it on crookedly as you rushed toward the mirror, mentally planning the fastest possible route to class. If you skipped properly brushing your hair and just fixed it on the way—maybe if you brushed your teeth in the bathroom nearest the Charms corridor—
And then you looked up.
Your stomach dropped so suddenly it felt like the floor had disappeared beneath you.
For a moment, all you could do was stare.
Your own reflection stared back at you in equal horror, pale and frozen and impossibly awake now, but you barely noticed the expression on your face because your eyes were locked on the red mark pressed against your cheek.
A lipstick stain.
Bright. Smudged.
Unmistakably shaped like the imprint of someone’s mouth.
Your breath caught.
There was another near the corner of your lips, blurred slightly like it had been kissed there carelessly. One against your jaw. Another lower down, just beneath your ear.
Dread began settling into you slowly, horribly, piece by piece.
“No.” You whispered.
Your hands started shaking.
“No, no—”
You turned slightly toward the mirror, fingers fumbling desperately with the collar of your shirt as you pulled it aside.
More.
Faint red marks scattered across your skin, disappearing beneath the fabric of your clothes. Some were clearer than others; some were smeared, dragged slightly, as though whoever had left them behind had done so thoughtlessly. Casually.
You stared at them, your reflection blurring around the edges as tears began burning in your eyes.
Your throat tightened painfully.
The room suddenly felt too small, too warm, your chest caving inward as realization settled fully over you.
“)Y/N), come on, class starts in—”
Hermione stopped mid-sentence.
You didn’t turn around, but you saw her expression shift in the mirror from annoyance to shock. Her eyes caught on the marks scattered across your neck and collarbone, and the look on her face softened so quickly it made something inside you crack further.
“Oh.”
You squeezed your eyes shut.
A heavy silence settled across the room. Then you heard Hermione approach slowly, carefully, like she was afraid one wrong movement would shatter you completely. She stopped just behind you, her reflection appearing over your shoulder, and when you finally forced yourself to look up again you saw nothing but sympathy written all over her face.
“Oh, (Y/N),” She said softly, and somehow the gentleness in her voice hurt worse than the marks themselves, “I’m so sorry.”
You swallowed hard and forced yourself to inhale, then exhale, trying desperately to hold yourself together.
“It’s fine,” You said immediately, too quickly, your voice unnaturally flat, “It’s not like I liked him anyway.”
The second the words left your mouth, your chin trembled.
Hermione’s expression crumpled.
And suddenly you couldn’t do it anymore.
A broken sound escaped your throat before you could stop it, and then the tears were falling all at once, hot and uncontrollable as the ache in your chest finally split wide open. You covered your mouth with your hand like that could somehow hold the sobs back, but it was useless. Your knees nearly gave out beneath you as weeks and months of buried hope came crashing down all at once.
Hermione caught you before you could fall properly, pulling you into her arms immediately.
And the second she did, you broke completely.
You cried into her shoulder so hard it hurt, fingers clutching desperately at the fabric of her jumper while humiliation and heartbreak tore through you in waves.
Your soulmate had slept with someone else.
A few mornings later, when Hermione sat down at the Gryffindor table for breakfast, she wasn't remotely offended when the eyes of her friends immediately flicked over her shoulder.
It had become something of a routine.
Every day for the past week, someone would look up when she arrived, expecting to find you trailing behind her. Every day their faces would fall when they realized she was alone.
Just as she was today.
Harry was the first to break the silence, "She still won't come down?"
Hermione's grip tightened slightly around her spoon.
The concern on his face mirrored exactly how she felt.
You hadn't attended a single class all week. The first two days had been the worst. You had cried until you physically exhausted yourself, until your body finally gave out and sleep claimed you against your will. By the following morning, you'd developed a fever bad enough that Hermione had practically dragged you to the Hospital Wing herself.
Madam Pomfrey had taken one look at your blotchy face, red-rimmed eyes, and dangerously high temperature before ordering you into a bed and refusing to hear arguments.
Hermione had stayed beside you for as long as she'd been allowed.
She remembered watching you sleep fitfully beneath white sheets, occasionally stirring only to curl further into yourself. She remembered the way your hand would sometimes move unconsciously toward your neck, fingers brushing against skin where the marks had long since faded.
Eventually Madam Pomfrey had forced Hermione out, insisting there was nothing more she could do.
Now several days later, the fever had broken.
But you still hadn't left your room.
Hermione shook her head, "No."
Hermione sighed, reaching for her tea, though her attention was nowhere near her breakfast. Her gaze swept across the Great Hall, not aimlessly skimming over the hundreds of students filling the room, but locking onto its target almost immediately like a heat-seeking missile.
Mattheo Riddle.
He sat at the Slytherin table with his friends, laughing at something one of them had said, completely at ease, looking every bit like he hadn't a single worry in the world. The sight of him sitting there so carelessly, smiling like life had handed him every reason to, made Hermione irrationally want to march across the hall, grab him by the ears, and squeeze his head until it popped like an unsightly pimple.
He had absolutely no idea.
No idea that his soulmate hadn't left her bed in days.
No idea that she'd cried herself into a fever.
No idea that Hermione had spent hours sitting beside her, listening to her sob until she had nothing left in her, only to watch her stare blankly at the canopy above her bed as though she'd forgotten how to exist.
Her jaw tightened.
"Look at him," She muttered bitterly, her eyes boring so intensely into the side of his head that she was almost disappointed when he didn't spontaneously burst into flames, "I spent half the week consoling her, and he's sitting over there like he's the bloody king of the world."
Then, she looked back down into the untouched cup of tea in front of her, watching her own furious reflection ripple across its surface. The anger was still there, burning hot beneath her skin, but it had long since become tangled with something far more unbearable.
Helplessness.
Because no matter how angry she was, it wouldn't undo what had happened.
It wouldn't stop you from shutting yourself away in your dormitory, curtains drawn around your bed, convinced that facing four wooden bedposts was somehow easier than facing the rest of the world.
She felt the sting behind her eyes before she realized she was blinking a little too often.
"I can't believe someone like her is supposed to end up with someone like him." She murmured, her voice losing all of its earlier bite.
She absentmindedly stabbed at her pancakes with her fork, skewering a lone berry in the process without even noticing.
"She's the sweetest, kindest, most selfless person I've ever met," Hermione continued quietly, swallowing around the lump that had formed in her throat, "She'd do absolutely anything for the people she loves, and somehow..." She gave a humorless laugh, shaking her head, "Somehow he's the person the universe chose for her."
Finally, Hermione let out a slow, defeated sigh.
"How could the universe be so cruel?"
Harry and Ron exchanged a glance, but neither of them answered.
Because what could they possibly say?
Afterall, they had no idea what it was like to be rejected by your soulmate.
Your head felt impossibly heavy.
When you'd finally cried yourself to sleep the night before, you'd hoped that maybe—just maybe—you'd wake up feeling even a little bit lighter.
Instead, it felt as though someone had stuffed your head full of damp cotton.
Everything was muted.
You could see the familiar shape of your dormitory around you, the sunlight spilling lazily through the windows, painting warm patches across the wooden floor, but none of it felt real. If someone had asked you to name half a dozen things in your own room, you weren't entirely convinced you could have done it. Your thoughts drifted in and out without ever quite settling long enough to grasp them.
Outside, Hogwarts carried on as though nothing had happened.
Somewhere below the tower, students laughed as they crossed the courtyard on their way back from breakfast. Every so often, a shrill whistle carried in through the open window, followed by the distant roar of voices from the Quidditch pitch.
Life went on.
It always did.
But inside your dormitory, it felt as though time itself had stopped.
Like you were sitting inside a vacuum, sealed away from the rest of the castle, where even the sound of your own breathing seemed impossibly far away.
You hadn't even realized someone was knocking.
The sound barely registered through the haze clouding your mind, so faint and distant that you mistook it for part of a dream. It wasn't until the door slowly creaked open that you finally stirred, letting out a weary sigh without even bothering to look up.
"Hermione," You mumbled into your pillow, your voice hoarse from days of crying, "Please... I don't want breakfast."
There was a brief pause.
"Well," Came a decidedly unfamiliar voice, "It's a good thing Chocolate Frogs aren't considered breakfast."
Your eyes snapped open.
Slowly, you pushed yourself upright, blinking through the fog in your head until the figure standing sheepishly in your doorway came into focus.
Messy ginger hair.
Hands buried deep in his pockets.
A crooked smile that looked like it wasn't entirely sure whether it belonged there.
"...Fred?"
The way you said his name made him chuckle softly.
Not because it was funny, exactly, but because your tone carried that slight undercurrent of cautiousness, like you were trying to work out whether you were looking at Fred Weasley or his identical twin.
"It's me," He assured you with an easy grin, "George is considerably uglier."
Despite everything, the corner of your mouth twitched.
Fred caught it but, to his credit, didn't point it out. He simply closed the door quietly behind him and wandered further into the dormitory, his hands still buried in the pockets of his jumper as though he were only stopping by for a casual chat.
Although, you knew better than to believe that.
He was here for something.
You just couldn't work out what.
Had Hermione sent him? Had she somehow decided that Fred's ridiculous sense of humour might succeed where she had failed? More importantly, how in Merlin's name had he even managed to get into the girls' dormitory in the first place?
"...What are you doing here?" You asked.
The question left your mouth more out of politeness than genuine curiosity.
Truthfully, you didn't really care.
Whether Fred was here or not, whether he'd come to cheer you up or drag you to breakfast or simply stare at you until you spoke, all you wanted was to be left alone again. So you settled back against your headboard, waiting for whatever explanation he had prepared so you could nod absentmindedly, mumble something about still being tired, and hope he'd take the hint.
Fred scratched the back of his neck.
"I don't really know," He admitted after a moment with a small shrug, "I heard Hermione talking about you downstairs."
He finally pulled his hands from his pockets.
A handful of Chocolate Frog boxes tumbled into his palms.
"I heard she was worried." He looked down at the collection of sweets before giving one shoulder another little shrug, "Next thing I knew, I was standing outside your door."
He crossed the room and sat down carefully on the edge of your bed.
Instinctively, you tugged your cocoon of blankets out from beneath him, unwilling to surrender even that small comfort. Fred pretended not to notice. Instead, he simply dropped the Chocolate Frogs into your lap one by one.
"I figured," He said, "if nothing else, chocolate rarely makes things worse."
You stared down at them for a second before absentmindedly picking one up and peeling open the box.
"Whatever Hermione's worried about..." You murmured, carefully unfolding the cardboard, "...it isn't going to happen."
The chocolate frog immediately sprang from your hands.
You watched it bounce across the dormitory floor, disappearing beneath someone's bed but you paid no heed, fishing the card from the now-empty box instead.
Helga Hufflepuff.
Nice.
"I just wanted some time to be alone," You said quietly, your thumb tracing absent circles over the edge of the card, "Some time to think. You wouldn't understand."
Fred's smile faded.
"Oh," He said, leaning back on his hands, "Believe me."
His eyes drifted toward the window for a moment.
"I know exactly what that's like."
You froze, your thumb absentmindedly tracing the edge of the Nicolas Flamel card as you silently cursed your own stupidity.
Of course.
You had completely forgotten who you were talking to.
Everyone knew Fred Weasley's story.
It had been impossible not to.
It had spread through Hogwarts like wildfire the day the twins turned sixteen and discovered, to the absolute bewilderment of the entire school, that they shared the same soulmate mark. The same name inked onto both of their wrists.
Angelina.
No one had known what to make of it. How could the universe make a mistake? It wasn't supposed to.
Yet somehow, two brothers had been promised the same girl.
In the end, Angelina had chosen George.
No one blamed her. She'd simply followed her heart.
And just like that, Fred had become the boy without a soulmate.
What followed had been painful to watch.
Every passing week seemed to chip away at something that had once felt unbreakable. Fred and George had always existed as a pair. Joined at the hip, people liked to joke. Before that, joined by an umbilical cord. There had never been one without the other.
It had been heartbreaking watching the distance grow between the twins afterwards. Not all at once, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, until people realized Fred no longer occupied the seat beside George in the Great Hall. They stopped seeing them sneaking through corridors together after curfew. Their jokes became less frequent, their laughter less shared.
Fred simply couldn't bear to watch the girl he'd spent years believing was destined to love him fall into his brother's arms instead.
Eventually, time had done what time always did.
The sharp edges had dulled.
The twins laughed together again. They pulled pranks together. They looked, from the outside at least, like themselves again. But anyone paying close enough attention could tell they were never quite the same.
How could they be?
Their seemingly inseverable brotherhood had been eclipsed by an ineffable bond.
Soulmates.
It was no longer Fred and George, the terrible terrors. Now, it was George and Angelina, the star-crossed lovers, and Fred, who had been left behind.
"I'm sorry." You whispered, the apology slipping out before you could stop it.
Fred's eyes met yours.
"So am I."
He didn't elaborate.
He didn't have to.
And for the first time in days, you felt the glass jar you had trapped yourself in begin to crack.
This whole time, you'd convinced yourself that hiding in your dormitory was helping. As long as you stayed within these four walls, you could pretend the world outside had stopped moving. Pretend that morning had never happened.
Reality settled over you with unbearable clarity.
That was what this was, wasn't it?
Rejection.
Mattheo had known exactly who you were. He'd known that every mark left on his skin would bloom across yours. He'd known you would wake up wearing the evidence of his choices.
And he'd done it anyway.
The thought hollowed you out.
Your entire life, you'd been told that soulmates were certainty. That somewhere in the world there was one person who would choose you above everyone else because the universe itself had decided you belonged together.
So what did it mean when they didn't?
If even your soulmate could look at you and still choose someone else...
Where exactly did that leave you?
Slowly, you lifted your eyes from the card to Fred, who was sitting beside you now, close enough that your shoulders nearly brushed, his gaze already fixed on you.
Your heart ached.
Because the answer to your unvoiced question was written all over his face.
He was every bit as heartbroken as you were.
Just as lost.
Just as unsure of where he fit into a universe that had promised him one thing, only to hand him another.
It hurt him every time he saw George with Angelina. You knew it did. No matter how much he loved his brother, no matter how genuinely happy he wanted to be for him, there had to be a small part of him that wondered why it hadn't been him.
Why fate had bothered writing her name onto his skin at all.
And you knew, with sickening certainty, that the next time you saw Mattheo...
It would tear you apart in exactly the same way.
Fred's expression softened as he noticed your eyes beginning to fill again.
He offered you a small, sympathetic smile.
"Well..." He said, giving one shoulder an exaggerated shrug, "At least we've got each other."
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it. It was watery and quiet, immediately chased by the tear that finally slipped down your cheek. Fred grinned a little wider, looking entirely too pleased with himself for managing to get even the tiniest laugh out of you.
"I suppose the reject bin isn't completely empty."
"No," Fred agreed, "Turns out it's got surprisingly good company."
Turns out misery really did love company.
It was almost pathetic, in a way.
The only reason you had finally been able to leave your room, to walk back into the Great Hall, to sit through classes without feeling like the walls were caving in around you, was because you'd discovered you weren't the only person carrying around this strangely specific kind of heartbreak.
Your chest still tightened whenever Mattheo walked into a room. Every accidental glance across a corridor still left you feeling hollowed out from the inside, wondering how someone who was supposedly destined to love you had found it so easy to choose somebody else instead.
But sitting beside Fred somehow made it easier to breathe.
You supposed anyone watching from the outside would've found it to be the most obvious outcome imaginable.
Birds of a feather.
Two people who had somehow fallen through the cracks of destiny naturally gravitating toward one another.
Before long, spending time with Fred stopped feeling like something you consciously chose to do and instead became part of your routine. You'd find him waiting outside your classroom without either of you having planned it, or he'd drop into the empty seat beside you at breakfast as though it had always belonged to him.
Sometimes you talked about soulmates.
Most of the time, you didn't.
And somehow, those were your favourite conversations.
You hadn't realized just how grateful you'd become for his presence until one morning at breakfast when Harry slid onto the bench opposite you, looking unusually flustered and whispered, "I met my soulmate last night."
Thankfully, Hermione's excited gasp and Ron's loud, "You what?!" completely drowned out the sound of your breath catching in your throat.
For a brief, horrible second, it felt as though you had left your own body.
The conversation continued around you in muffled voices while you watched it all unfold from somewhere far away, like you were observing it through thick glass. Hermione was already peppering Harry with questions. Harry, red-faced and grinning despite himself, tried unsuccessfully to answer them both at once.
You just... watched.
Until something warm wrapped gently around your hand beneath the table and your attention snapped back. Without saying a word, you laced your fingers through his beneath the tablecloth, hidden from everyone else.
The knot in your stomach loosened.
Not completely. But just enough so that when you turned back to Harry, the smile on your face no longer felt so forced.
"Congratulations, Harry," You said softly, "I'm really happy for you."
Harry's smile faltered.
Only then did it seem to occur to him what he'd just blurted out—and who he'd blurted it out in front of.
A flicker of guilt passed across his face behind his glasses.
"Oh, (Y/N), I didn't—I wasn't thinking—"
You shook your head before he could finish, "It's okay."
And surprisingly...
It was.
Harry relaxed, offering you a small, grateful smile before Hermione immediately launched into another question, successfully stealing his attention once more.
Only then did you turn your head.
Fred was already looking at you.
Your joined hands still rested beneath the table, his thumb absentmindedly brushing across your knuckles.
"I just can't believe how much time I've wasted."
Your voice was quiet as you stared up at the canopy of Fred's bed, watching the afternoon sunlight dance lazily across the faded red fabric. Beside you, Fred lay with one arm tucked behind his head, the other dangling over the edge of the mattress. He turned his head slightly.
"Hm?"
It wasn't often the conversation drifted back to soulmates anymore.
Somehow, the two of you had become remarkably good at avoiding the very thing that had brought you together in the first place. But every now and then, usually when the castle had gone quiet around you, one of you would bring it up again.
And somehow it was always easier talking to Fred than anyone else.
"I've never even been on a date," You admitted with a humourless laugh, "Can you believe that?"
Fred's eyebrows lifted.
"I just... wasted so much time." You sighed, picking absentmindedly at a loose thread in the blanket. "I kept thinking there was no point. Why bother dating when the universe was supposedly going to hand me the perfect person eventually?"
You shook your head.
"I was so convinced that one day everything would just... happen."
A small smile tugged at your lips.
"I suppose, in retrospect, that's a rather ridiculous way to live."
Fred was quiet for a moment.
Then he nodded.
"I get it."
You looked over at him.
"Before my soulmate mark appeared," He continued, "I never really bothered trying either. I always figured I'd meet my soulmate eventually, so whoever I dated beforehand wouldn't really matter."
He let out a small breath through his nose.
"And after..." His smile turned a little sad, "Well, there wasn't much point then either."
You understood immediately.
"Everyone already had someone they were meant to end up with."
"Exactly."
He shrugged, "It felt like borrowing someone else's future."
Silence settled comfortably between you.
"I know exactly what you mean," You murmured, "Even if I'd somehow found someone I actually liked. It would've only been a matter of time before they found their soulmate."
"And then I'd just be..." You trailed off, "Temporary."
Fred didn't say anything.
He didn't have to.
Because he'd spent the last year feeling exactly the same way.
You groaned dramatically, throwing an arm over your eyes, "I just want to go on a date for once."
Fred snorted.
"Is that too much to ask?" You bemoaned.
"I don't even want anything extravagant," You continued, finally sitting upright since the topic had become important enough to warrant an actual discussion. You gestured vaguely with your hands, trying to paint the picture in the air between you, "Just… one completely ordinary date."
Fred turned his head to look at you.
"I want to wear a pretty dress," You admitted, counting on your fingers, "I want to spend far too long doing my hair, even though it'll probably end up looking exactly the same as it did before. I want someone to bring me flowers."
The last part made Fred's eyebrows climb.
"...Flowers?"
You frowned at him as though he'd just said something outrageously offensive.
"Yes. Flowers."
"You've just spent the last minute insisting you don't want anything extravagant."
"They're flowers. It's the bare minimum."
A comfortable silence settled over the room again. You flopped back against the mattress with an exaggerated sigh, staring up at the canopy above while Fred continued looking at the ceiling beside you.
"I just..." You murmured after a while, your voice softer now, "I wish I knew what it felt like."
"What?"
"To have butterflies."
The admission felt oddly embarrassing.
"To get excited because someone asked me out. To spend the whole day wondering what they're going to think when they see me. To hold someone's hand because they wanted to hold mine." You laughed quietly at yourself, "I don't even care whether it's life-changing anymore."
You swallowed, the words catching slightly in your throat.
“I just wanted to know what normal feels like.”
For a moment, Fred didn’t respond.
He just lay there beside you, one arm tucked behind his head, eyes fixed lazily on the canopy above as though he were turning your words over somewhere quieter than conversation. The pause stretched longer than you expected it to—long enough that you almost convinced yourself he wasn’t going to answer at all, that the moment had passed and you’d said too much again.
Then, almost absentmindedly, he spoke.
“So let’s go on one.”
You frowned, turning your head slightly, having forgotten how the conversation had even ended, “...Go on what?”
“A date.”
That made you sit up a little more properly, the word feeling strangely out of place in the softness of the room, “A date?”
“Seems like the obvious solution.” He added, as though he were suggesting something as simple as going for a walk.
You blinked at him, trying to make sense of his expression, “...With who?”
Fred looked almost insulted.
"With me."
Silence.
Not the comfortable kind this time.
The air between you shifted—just slightly. You became acutely aware of the space between your shoulders, the way your fingers were curled into the blanket, the way Fred didn’t seem to notice any of it at all.
He, meanwhile, looked completely unconcerned with the fact that he had just suggested something that felt like it should be impossible to say out loud.
“I mean…” He continued after a beat, shrugging one shoulder as if it were obvious, “Think about it.”
You hesitated, “I am.”
“We’re both sitting here complaining we’ve never really dated anyone.”
“Yes…”
“We’re both catastrophically single.”
“Unfortunately.” You muttered, despite yourself.
“We both want to know what all the fuss is about.”
“I suppose.”
“So…” He spread his hands slightly, palms up, as though presenting the most logical conclusion in the world, “Why don’t we just take each other? Scratch the itch a bit.”
You looked away for a second, down at your hands where they were picking absently at the edge of the blanket, “I don’t know…” You admitted quietly.
Fred didn’t push. He rarely did.
Instead, he shifted slightly closer—not enough to crowd you, just enough that his presence was harder to ignore.
“You said you wanted to wear a pretty dress.”
“I did.” You murmured.
“You said you wanted a normal date.”
That made you glance back at him again.
Your voice came out softer this time, almost uncertain, “I do.”
A pause.
The kind that felt like something was being decided inside it.
Fred’s expression didn’t change much, but his voice gentled.
“So let me take you on one.”
Even though you were almost entirely certain Fred had suggested the date as a joke, you found yourself surprisingly nervous when the day finally arrived.
Not because you expected anything to happen.
It wasn't really a date, after all.
Not a real one.
Just two rejects pretending, for a few hours, that the universe hadn't forgotten about them.
Still, you couldn't deny there was something undeniably exciting about getting ready for it.
You stood in front of the mirror for far longer than you cared to admit, smoothing invisible creases from your clothes before immediately finding new ones to fuss over. Your hair had already been redone twice, and you were currently debating whether it looked better tucked behind your ears or left loose around your shoulders.
You had practically licked your lips dry, wanting to put on just a little bit of gloss, if not to look good then at least to stop you from worrying them so much.
But third year had taught you that makeup simply wasn't worth the argument.
The memory still made you grimace.
You had gotten a tube of cherry lip gloss as an impulse purchase from Hogsmeade. The bottle was just so cute and the colour was just right and it smelt like a cherry pie.
You'd worn it exactly once before Mattheo had cornered you in a corridor, positively livid over the matching sheen that had mysteriously appeared on his own lips.
The argument had been spectacular.
You'd shouted.
He'd shouted louder.
By the end of it both your cheeks had been burning, partly from anger and partly from the sheer humiliation.
After that, you'd quietly switched to glamour charms.
You shook your head, willing the memory to leave your mind. A light spritz of perfume followed, and then another after you convinced yourself the first one hadn't been enough.
This wasn't a date.
You reminded yourself of that several times while changing outfits.
And yet, by the time you finally slipped out of Gryffindor Tower—carefully timing your escape before Hermione and the others returned from lunch so nobody could make a spectacle of it—you couldn't deny the flutter of anticipation low in your stomach.
Your first date.
Fake though it may have been.
Fred was already waiting beside the Black Lake when you arrived. The moment he spotted you, his face broke into an easy grin. He awkwardly straightened where he stood before holding out a small bouquet of hand-picked wildflowers.
A smile spread across your face before you could stop it.
You accepted them carefully, bringing them close enough to catch their sweet scent, asking with a teasing lilt to your tone, "Now whose Herbology project did you ruin by nicking these?"
Fred clutched dramatically at his chest.
"I would never."
"No?"
"I'll have you know these were ethically sourced. Well, a bit of unpaid labour." He said, showing you the slight dirt that was still left on the tips of his fingers.
You grinned, leaning to give him a quick peck on the cheek, "There, paid for in full."
"So..." You said, looking up at him, "What's the plan? It isn't swimming, is it? Because I spent entirely too long on my hair."
His eyes flicked over said hair for only the briefest moment.
"It looks nice."
You blinked.
"...Thank you."
The words came so casually that he didn't even seem to realize he'd said them aloud. Then his usual grin returned, "And don't worry. I've got something much more special in mind."
Rather than reassuring you, that somehow made you considerably more suspicious.
Fred simply laughed before turning on his heel and beckoning for you to follow. He led you around the edge of the Black Lake and toward a dense cluster of trees you'd never paid much attention to before.
"I thought we'd collectively agreed wandering into mysterious forests was a terrible idea after the centaurs last year." You remarked as you ducked beneath a low branch he held out of your way.
"We did."
"And?"
"We also established I was the worse student between the two of us."
You rolled your eyes, "Can't argue with that."
A few moments later he stopped.
Nestled between several thick tree trunks was what appeared to be nothing more than a tiny tunnel woven entirely from vines and ivy.
Before you had time to question it, Fred crouched down and disappeared inside.
You stared after him.
"...Bit brazen of you to expect a girl to get on her knees on the first date, don't you think, Weasley?"
His laugh echoed back through the tunnel.
"Oh, come on."
"I'm simply making observations."
"Get in here, (Y/N)."
Still muttering dramatically under your breath, you crouched down and crawled after him. The tunnel only lasted a few feet.
The first thing you noticed as your head emerged from the other side was the sunlight. Bright summer sunshine spilled across your face exactly as expected.
The second thing you noticed was the cold.
A sharp, winter chill immediately kissed your cheeks and nipped at the end of your nose.
You blinked.
Then looked up.
Your breath caught.
Hidden away beyond the curtain of vines was a tiny clearing unlike anywhere else on the Hogwarts grounds.
Wildflowers carpeted the earth in every imaginable colour while rabbits darted lazily through the grass, entirely unconcerned by your arrival. Golden afternoon light poured through the canopy overhead, making the entire place glow like something lifted straight from a fairy tale.
But none of that was what stole your breath.
At the very centre of the clearing lay a lake.
Perfectly still.
Perfectly frozen.
A sheet of flawless ice sat beneath the blazing summer sun as though winter itself had been trapped inside this tiny corner of the world.
"...What on earth..."
"Amazing, isn't it?"
You turned to find Fred watching you rather than the lake.
His grin was quieter now. There was still that unmistakable stretch of pride across his face as he took in your gobsmacked reaction, but beneath it lingered a hint of fondness that sent a slight flush to your cheeks, one you stubbornly insisted was caused by the cold.
"I was mucking about here in second year," He admitted with an embarrassed scratch at the back of his neck, "George and I were trying to invent a product that could make it snow indoors."
"And?"
"And... I may have perpetually frozen the entire lake."
You stared at him, "You may have?"
He shrugged, "I got scared I'd be in trouble if anyone found it."
"So you..."
"So, I never told anyone."
As he spoke, he reached out and absentmindedly cast a quiet Scourgify over your clothes, brushing away the bits of moss and leaves that had collected while crawling through the tunnel.
His fingers paused near your shoulder.
"There."
He gently plucked a tiny twig from your hair before tucking a loose strand behind your ear with absent familiarity.
"So..." You looked back at the lake, "You've never shown anyone this?"
"No."
"...Not even George?"
Fred's smile softened.
He shook his head.
"No."
Something warm unfurled low in your chest.
Warmer than the summer sun beating down on you.
You felt it.
The butterflies.
Walking back toward the castle felt strangely bittersweet.
Like stepping out of a storybook.
The hidden clearing disappeared behind the curtain of vines the moment you stepped through it, swallowed once again by the forest as though it had never been there at all. If you hadn't still felt the lingering chill clinging to your clothes, you might have convinced yourself you'd imagined the entire afternoon.
Your nose stung from the cold.
Your cheeks, however, had turned pink from hours spent laughing beneath the summer sun.
The two of you had spent hours on that frozen lake.
By the time the sun had begun sinking below the treeline, painting the ice in shades of amber and gold, the two of you had been too exhausted to do much more than sit side by side on the frozen shore, talking until the growing darkness reminded you that professors generally frowned upon students disappearing into enchanted forests after curfew.
Now, the familiar warmth of the castle wrapped around you as the heavy oak doors swung shut behind you.
The sudden change in temperature made your fingers tingle unpleasantly as feeling slowly returned to them.
A comfortable silence settled between you as you wandered through the entrance hall.
Students passed around you in little groups, chatting animatedly over dinner plans and unfinished essays, but neither of you made any move toward joining them.
Eventually, you reached the foot of the marble staircase.
You turned toward Fred.
He'd been unusually quiet for the last few minutes.
The easy confidence he'd carried all afternoon had somehow disappeared somewhere between the lake and the castle, replaced instead by something unexpectedly hesitant. His hands had found the pockets of his jumper again and he rocked back slightly on his heels before clearing his throat.
"(Y/N)..."
"Hm?"
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"So..."
You waited.
"I know..." He let out a small, awkward laugh, "I know this wasn't exactly a date-date. But…" His eyes found yours again, "I had a really good time."
Something in your chest fluttered.
"And unless I've completely misread today..." He continued carefully, "I think maybe you did too."
You did.
Far more than you'd expected to.
"So..." He took a small breath, "Unless I've made an absolute fool of myself here, I was wondering if maybe—"
"Let's go on a second date, Fred."
The words escaped before your brain had the chance to stop them.
You hadn't meant to interrupt him.
Truthfully, you'd been rather enjoying the exceedingly rare spectacle of Fred Weasley stumbling over his own words. It was oddly endearing watching someone who always seemed to have a joke ready suddenly become hopelessly tongue-tied.
Unfortunately, your own anticipation had won the race.
Silence settled between you. Fred simply stared. For one wonderfully long moment, he looked completely dumbfounded.
Then, slowly, a grin began tugging at the corners of his mouth.
It spread across his face before he could stop it, bright enough that you watched him actively try to suppress it.
"Well," He drawled, folding his arms as though he hadn't just been struck speechless, "Someone's certainly getting ahead of herself, isn't she?"
You folded your own arms in mock offence.
"Oh?"
"I hadn't even finished asking yet."
"You were taking too long."
He took one thoughtful look at you before his grin returned in full force.
"...So," He tilted his head ever so slightly, "Same time next week?"
Fred was always good at date ideas.
You knew that much by now.
Every time you met him, there was something planned—something a little ridiculous, a little exhausting, and always, without fail, something that made it impossible for you to think about anything else except how much you were laughing.
But with the July heat pressing down over Hogwarts like a heavy, unrelenting spell, even Fred’s usual energy had begun to soften at the edges.
The castle itself felt sluggish. Corridors held onto warmth long after sunset, windows stayed permanently open, and even the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall seemed stuck in an endless stretch of pale, hazy blue.
But it seemed the unbearable heat had given Fred an idea for another date.
Which was how you found yourself standing at the edge of the Black Lake in a cute bikini you’d been waiting all summer to wear, your shoes discarded somewhere in the grass behind you, watching him attempt to skip stones across the water.
He managed one bounce.
The stone immediately sank.
“Hm,” Fred said thoughtfully, staring at the ripples like they had personally betrayed him, “I’ve gotten considerably worse at that.”
“You were never good.”
“I distinctly remember being excellent.”
“That’s the heat talking. It’s cooked your brain.”
He gasped, pressing a hand to his chest in mock offence.
“You wound me.”
“I try.”
He looked at you, a sinister smile on his face that gave you a feeling that he was planning something, “Well, I try harder.”
You barely had time to process the warning in his grin before you felt it—a sharp splash against your shoulders, cold water exploding across your skin.
“Fred!”
You sputtered as you broke the surface, hair dripping into your eyes just in time to see him double over laughing.
And then, before you could retaliate, he cannonballed in after you.
Every moment of calm dissolved into splashing, laughter, and half-hearted attempts to dunk one another beneath the surface. Fred succeeded exactly once before you retaliated by grabbing his ankle and dragging him under with you, emerging seconds later breathless and triumphant.
By the time the chaos finally eased, you’d drifted farther from shore, your limbs heavy with exhaustion and your sides aching from laughing too hard.
For a moment, there was nothing but gentle movement. Water lapping softly against your shoulders. Sunlight scattering across the surface in broken gold. Fred floating nearby, hair plastered to his forehead, grinning like he didn’t have a single thought in his head except this.
You turned slightly, your gaze catching on something in the water near your hands.
It glimmered faintly beneath the surface.
“Oh—wait—” You said, reaching out instinctively, “I think that’s a shell or something. It's pretty."
Before you could even finish the sentence, Fred was already diving.
He disappeared beneath the surface without hesitation.
"Chivalry is dead, they say."
The words died in your throat when he resurfaced a moment later, shaking water from his hair.
In his hand, he held the shell out proudly, grinning at you, “Ta-da.”
You smiled automatically, already reaching for it, already preparing some teasing comment until your eyes slipped past his hand.
Past the shell.
To his wrist.
Angelina.
The name sat against his skin like it belonged there.
Like it had always belonged there.
Your fingers stopped mid-air.
Fred was still talking, still smiling, still looking at you with that easy warmth that had become so familiar you didn’t even think about it anymore. His voice blurred slightly at the edges, like it was coming from farther away than it actually was, and the lake around you suddenly felt quieter, heavier, as though it had decided to hold its breath with you.
You couldn’t look away from it.
Angelina.
It wasn't wasn't the first time you were seeing it. It definitely wasn't new.
And yet seeing it like this—so close, so real, so casually visible between moments of laughter—made something inside you tighten in a way you hadn’t been prepared for.
The universe’s choice.
Not you.
Never you.
A strange stillness settled in your chest, not sharp at first, just heavy, like the slow sinking of something you hadn’t realized you were holding. Your thoughts began to slip before you could catch them, drifting in directions you couldn’t stop.
Would they make a good couple?
Did she ever think about him when she looked at George?
Did she ever wonder what it would’ve been like if she’d chosen differently, if she’d taken a different path, if she’d looked at the wrong twin and hesitated just a second longer?
And worse—did Fred ever think about it too?
The shell in his hand suddenly felt irrelevant, something from a different moment entirely, like it didn’t belong in this one anymore. Like it had been part of a version of the world where you weren’t thinking about this. Where you weren’t standing in the middle of a lake watching the evidence of a future you didn’t belong in wrapped around his wrist.
You weren’t even fully aware of the shift until it had already happened.
One moment you were here, in sunlight and laughter and water that still clung warm to your skin.
The next, everything felt distant.
Muted.
As though you had stepped just slightly outside of yourself.
“…(Y/N)?”
You blinked, forcing yourself back into your body, into the moment, into the lake and the shell and him.
Fred was closer now, his expression no longer playful. The smile had faded without him even seeming to notice, replaced by something quieter, more attentive.
“You alright?”
For a second, you forgot how to answer.
Then you managed something that almost resembled normal.
“Yeah.”
A pause.
His eyes didn’t leave your face.
“You sure?”
Too quickly—too automatically—you nodded.
“Just cold.”
Even as you said it, you knew it wasn’t convincing.
Fred didn’t push. He rarely did when it mattered.
Instead, he moved closer through the water until his arm brushed yours, steady and grounding, and then—like it was the most natural thing in the world—he slipped it around your waist to keep you from drifting too far with the current.
“Yeah? Well,” He said softly, almost lightly again, as though trying to pull you back without forcing it, “We can fix that.”
And for a moment, you let him.
Just a moment.
A final moment.
In all honesty, you hadn’t meant to avoid him.
Really, you hadn’t.
It wasn’t like you actively chose to turn around every time you saw Fred in the corridors, or pretend you hadn’t received his notes because you’d gone to bed early, or slip out of a room the second you heard his boisterous laughter drawing closer—the same laughter that used to send a wave of warmth flooding through you.
But every time you saw him—his warm brown eyes, shadowed by long lashes—you felt that sinking pit open up in your stomach, swallowing everything else whole. It ruined your day before it had even properly begun.
And even though all you wanted was to be near him, you couldn’t help but turn away every time his eyes searched for you.
You really should have considered the fact that Fred wasn’t going to take it lying down.
And that he knew all about the secret passageways scattered around Hogwarts.
So you really shouldn’t have been surprised when he appeared in the corridor that had been empty not even a second ago—grabbing your wrist and stopping you in your tracks.
“Fred.”
“This push-and-pull bullshit isn’t going to work with me, (Y/N),” He said immediately, “If you want to break up with me, you better look me in the eye and do it.”
Ironic.
Because you couldn’t.
Your gaze stayed anchored to his wrist—specifically, to the inked name along his pulse, peeking out from beneath his sleeve.
And just like that, the pit in your stomach returned.
“This isn’t going to work, Fred.”
His brows twitched, his grip tightening just a fraction—like he was afraid you’d slip away again if he loosened it.
“Why?”
You let out a breath, shaking your head like the answer should be obvious.
“Because you’re not meant to be with me,” You said, “You’re already… destined for someone else.”
A flicker of confusion crossed his face.
“My brother’s soulmate?” He said, almost incredulous, “I would never do that to him. And she’s already made her choice.”
“And if she didn’t?” You pressed, your voice tightening, “If she changes her mind tomorrow? If she decides you’re the one she’s meant to be with… would you change yours?”
The question hung between you.
Fred didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, his gaze sharpened.
“Well then what about you?” He shot back, “If Riddle suddenly realizes how badly he messed up—comes crawling back, begging you to take him—would you go?”
The edge in his voice hit harder than you expected.
Suddenly, you were back in your dorm room again, staring at lipstick marks you hadn’t chosen, feeling that same hollow, awful ache in your chest.
Except this time—
he wasn’t your soulmate.
You had no claim to Fred.
If he turned around tomorrow and chose Angelina, you couldn’t fault him for it.
After all… she was his soulmate.
And if he wasn’t by your side—
If Mattheo came back, asking for your forgiveness—
Would you really be able to go back to him like nothing had happened? Could you let him touch you with the same hands that had touched someone else, pretend you didn’t know exactly where they had been? Could you stand there in his arms and still feel that sense of certainty you used to dream soulmates would bring—the feeling that this was your place in the world, that you were chosen, needed, loved completely?
“No,” You said, your voice barely above a whisper as the realization settled in, “I wouldn’t.”
Your voice steadied as you continued.
“I don’t want someone who would hurt me on purpose,” You said quietly, “I don’t want someone who makes me feel like I’m something they can come back to when it suits them. Like the only reason I’m with them is because someone out there decided it.”
Your eyes lifted to meet his.
“I want you.” You admitted, your voice tightening as you realized just how true it was.
These past few weeks with Fred had been the happiest you’d been in a long time. When you were with him, it felt like you’d finally found your place in the universe.
And that terrified you.
Because he wasn’t yours.
Not really.
And if those lipstick marks had broken your heart, then watching Fred walk away from you and go back to Angelina the second she called would destroy you.
“But I want you to want me too,” You finished, “Not just because I’m there. Not just to fill some empty space.”
Silence settled between you.
Fred’s grip loosened—not letting go, just sliding from your wrist to your hand, holding it instead.
“I’ll admit it,” He said after a moment, “That’s how it started.”
Your chest tightened.
“Just… something to make it hurt less,” He continued, quieter now, “Something to not feel so bloody lonely all the time.”
He looked at you then—really looked at you.
“But it’s not that anymore, (Y/N).”
And when you met his eyes, all you saw was sincerity. It hit you in a way you couldn’t quite explain—like the two of you weren’t just standing in a corridor anymore, but somewhere else entirely. Somewhere smaller. Quieter.
Just the two of you in the entire universe.
“I’m falling for you,” He said, like it scared him a little to admit it, he'd been burned before and he was scared he was going to be again, “And I want to be with you. Soulmate or not.”
You wanted to believe him.
You really did.
But the tattoo of her name lingered in your mind—a ghost between the two of you you didn’t know how to exorcise.
“But what about—”
“Fuck Angelina, alright!”
Your eyes widened and he dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated, desperate, “There isn’t a single part of me that wants her right now,” He said, “I thought I did. I thought I was supposed to. But I don’t.”
His voice dropped.
“Not like I do when I’m with you.”
You stared at him, that pit in your stomach beginning to dissipate, just slightly.
“(Y/N), please.” He said, taking your hand in both of his and pulling you closer, guiding your palm to rest against his chest.
His heartbeat was fast.
Almost as fast as yours.
“If you don’t feel the same way about me, that’s okay,” He said softly, “But don’t push me away because you think I’d rather be with anyone other than you. Because there is no one else, and there never will be.”
Something in you shifted, quiet but undeniable, and before you could second-guess it you stepped closer, your hand coming up to rest against his shoulder as you rose onto your toes, leaning in with the simple intention of pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.
But at the last second, he turned his head.
Your breath caught, your lips just a hair away from meeting his, so close you could feel the warmth of him, could see your own reflection in his blown out pupils. Your gaze dropped, almost involuntarily, to his mouth for just a moment and before you knew what was happening, you had closed the distance.
You had always thought your first kiss would be with your soulmate. You had saved it, carefully, stubbornly, building it up in your mind during sleepless nights—imagining electricity in little jolts rushing through your body, feeling inexplicable heat where he would've grabbed the dips of your waist, imagining certainty, imagining that unmistakable feeling that would tell you, without question, this is it.
You thought you would feel boundless joy rush through you, a state of euphoria that made you feel tethered and floating at the same time as you kissed the person you were meant to be with for the very first time.
As your arms slid around Fred’s neck and pulled him closer, as he kissed you back, his arms looping around your waist as he began to lose himself into you, blurring the lines between where you ended and he began.
You realized—
It was everything you had ever dreamed it would be.
The Gryffindor common room was rarely this quiet.
It almost felt like you had managed to catch your foot in the rug and slip into some kind of alternate dimension. Normally, it was chaos in its purest form—laughter spilling over armchairs, someone shouting about Quidditch from across the room, first-years getting shushed for the tenth time in five minutes. But tonight, the fire crackled softly instead of roaring, and even that felt like it was trying not to disturb the peace.
You were curled up in Fred’s lap like it was the most natural place in the world, one of his arms loosely around your waist while the other lazily traced patterns against your knee. You, meanwhile, were fully invested in a crossword puzzle like your life depended on it.
“Six across,” You murmured, brow furrowed, “Ten letters. ‘An ingredient in Pepper-Up potion—’ oh, this is easy.”
Fred hummed behind you, amused, “You say that about every single clue.”
“Because I am right every single time.”
“You absolutely are not.”
You glanced up at him over your shoulder, squinting, “Are you challenging my intellectual superiority?”
He shrugged, though that infuriating smirk was still on his face, “Not at all. Oh look—twelve down. Another word for humility. Quick, how many letters in 'not (Y/N)'?”
You clicked your tongue, rolling your eyes, and moved on to the next clue, solving it just as quickly as the last one. You leaned back against him with a satisfied little grin—and Fred tightened his arm around you just enough to make you tilt into him again.
“Show-off.” He murmured.
You solved another clue, and without thinking, pressed a quick kiss to his jaw.
Fred paused.
Then, like it was nothing at all, he kissed the top of your head in return.
It became a rhythm after that—clue, answer, kiss; clue, answer, kiss—soft and absentminded, warm in a way that made the rest of the world feel very far away.
Until it didn’t.
“You two are adorable.” Came a voice behind you.
You both turned slightly.
Lavender Brown stood a few steps away, arms folded, her expression somewhere between pity and smug satisfaction. Her gaze flicked pointedly between you and Fred, lingering just a second too long on the way you were sitting together.
“It’s just…” She continued lightly, “such a shame, isn’t it?”
You blinked, “What is?”
“That you’re not actually soulmates.” Her lips curled, “It’s such a shame you’ll never know what it feels like to be in your soulmate’s arms.”
Silence settled for half a beat.
Fred’s hand stopped moving on your waist.
You slowly closed the crossword book.
Then you looked up at her properly.
“Well, I actually take a lot of pride in that,” You said, voice sweet as honey, “At least I’m not like some people who the big man in the sky clearly knew wouldn’t be able to land a partner with that face and personality… so he had to shackle some poor bloke to them just to make it work.”
Fred made a sound that suspiciously resembled a cough hiding a laugh.
Lavender’s face went red instantly, “That’s— I didn’t—”
“Mm.” You tilted your head, “Anyway, good talk.”
She opened her mouth again, clearly searching for something to salvage her dignity, but nothing came. After a second of flustered silence, she spun on her heel and walked away far faster than she’d arrived.
The moment she was gone, Fred let out a low whistle.
“Good job, sweetheart.”
“Well,” You said with a small shrug, “I am the funny one in this relationship.”
Fred hummed quietly—the sound vibrating through his chest where your back was pressed against him.
“Oh yeah?” He murmured.
There was something in his voice now—lower, slower, warmer.
“S'that so?”
Something about it—the depth of his tone, the way his words seemed to slur like they were weighing on his tongue, the way he looked at you like he was genuinely drunk on you—made your stomach drop in a way you’d never felt before.
The crossword book slipped from your lap and fell to the floor.
And then you were turning fully in his arms, grabbing the front of his jumper, and kissing him properly.
Fred made a sound of surprise that quickly melted into something far more pleased. His palm slid to your back, pulling you in, and you felt yourself go slightly hollow with it—like every thought had been knocked clean out of you. Your hands moved up to frame his jaw as he kissed you back with growing desire.
And for a moment, the rest of the world didn’t exist at all.
Ron Weasley chose that exact moment to walk into the common room like he had impeccable comedic timing and absolutely no sense of mercy.
The door swung open with a creak, letting in a burst of cold corridor air—and Ron, flanked by a couple of his friends, froze mid-step.
Ron physically recoiled.
“For God’s sake,” He groaned, dragging a hand down his face, “Can you guys stop this disgusting display of affection?"
Fred didn’t even look embarrassed. If anything, he looked mildly offended that Ron had interrupted his very important work of being glued to your lips.
You, still slightly breathless—and also slightly offended—were actually a little relieved he’d walked in. Because if you’d been allowed to carry on, you were fairly certain you’d be expelled for public indecency.
Ron gestured vaguely at the scene like it physically pained him, like he was about to wretch up his guts at the thought of one of his best friends with his brother, “It makes other people who haven’t found their soulmates feel bad.”
Your eyes flicked to Fred.
And before you could stop it, you both shared the same secret smile.
Ron hadn’t even realized what he’d implied.
Still, something warm and oddly sweet curled in your stomach anyway.
Fred noticed it too. Of course he did.
“Right,” He said lazily, looking back at Ron, “We’ll make ourselves scarce then. Wouldn’t want to traumatise poor, lonely Ronald.”
“Oi—”
But Fred was already standing, pulling you up with him in one smooth motion like it was second nature.
You barely had time to steady yourself before his hand found yours.
And just like that, he was leading you toward the staircase.
You glanced over your shoulder at Ron one last time, sending him a mischievous smile and a quick wink.
He responded with a face of pure disgust.
It made you laugh—but the sound faded as you climbed higher into the tower, Fred still holding your hand like he had no intention of letting go.
epilogue: (lowkey the og plan was to kill off freddie but i changed my mind lol)
Eventually, Mattheo Riddle became very good at pretending.
It was a skill he perfected over the years in the same quiet, miserable way people learned to live with old injuries—carefully, stubbornly, until the pain became less of a sharp wound and more of a permanent ache woven into everyday life.
At first, it had been difficult. Mattheo had always been a man of candor. When he wanted something, he took it. When he felt desire, he showed it, and more often than not the world bent willingly into his hands. When he felt anger, disgust, hatred—he made sure everyone around him felt it too.
But heartbreak?
Guilt?
Regret?
Those emotions sat strangely on him, like clothes tailored for someone else entirely.
For a long time, he found reminders of you everywhere. Every couple passing him in the street felt like a mockery of something he had ruined with his own hands.
But time had a cruel way of dulling even the sharpest pain.
Eventually, Hogwarts became memories instead of places. The castle faded into nothing more than fragments in the back of his mind. He stopped dreaming about you eventually. Or perhaps he simply stopped remembering the dreams by morning.
He learned how to fill his days well enough.
Work helped.
Noise helped.
Women helped sometimes too, though never for very long. He became frighteningly good at moving from one distraction to the next without ever lingering long enough for silence to settle around him properly.
Because silence was dangerous.
Silence was where you lived.
People stopped mentioning your name around him after a while.
That helped.
Or at least, that was what he liked to believe.
Years passed that way.
Quietly. Pathetically.
And eventually, he became good enough at pretending that even he almost believed himself.
Until one morning, long after he had stopped allowing himself to think about soulmates at all, Mattheo woke to faint silver lines stretching across the skin of his stomach.
For a long moment, he simply stared at them in the mirror.
Then, silently, he swallowed the pain.
And pretended he never noticed them.
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That ‘comment on your a03 work’ email hits like a line of cocaine every time. unmatched dopamine increase. shoutout to everyone who leaves a comment on fics. you deserve the world
After that heavy conversation and the decision to sleep it off, I was only woken up when the bell rang in the late morning, around 11 am. I opened it up to see Ji Young turned away from me and on a call. I noticed a container in her hand and looked closely to see some baked goods. I tried to take it away from her hands, but she pulled it back and finally came face to face with me.
I watched her face go through lots of expressions looking at me, but she settled with a frown and confusion. We looked at each other for a few seconds, my hands still outstretched for the container. She then bid goodbye to the person she was speaking to on the phone and pulled me inside my apartment and locked us in.
“What happened to you?” she blurted out. “You look like you got smacked on the face or just sick, no offense…WAIT, did the snacks I brought for you make you sick?” She continued, her voice laced with concern.
“None taken. I overslept,” I explained, hoping she would just drop it. I reached for the container again, and this time she dropped it in my hands. She looked at me in disbelief and snorted.
“Ohh, did you seriously bake this this morning?” I asked, desperate to change the topic away from how I looked lifeless and hollowed out, but she was not having it.
“I hate to remind you, but I can tell exactly when you are lying.” She pointed out. I pressed my lips together before offering her a smile that looked strained at the very best.
She continued, pointing between my eyebrows and my eyes that were looking past her to the wall behind her, “Creases between the eyebrows and avoiding eye contact- a classic sign that Emma Reeves is lying to my face.”
I gave her a deadpan expression before scoffing, “Sure, sure.” She didn’t look impressed at the slightest; her frown deepened, if more at my straight dismissal. At that I gave in,
“I had a nightmare this morning, a really vivid one. That kept me up for some time,” I explained some part of it, just sticking to the nightmare part. I mentally winced at the reaction and the full-on war that would happen if I told her the real reason I couldn’t get a full sleep.
“A nightmare, she says,” she muttered to herself in disbelief as she made her way to the kitchen and pulled out the coffee machine. “We will definitely talk about it later; go and freshen up, Emma, you look like you haven’t had any food since forever, and drink some water first,” she ordered as she turned the coffee machine on before pouring me a glass of water.
I walked away from her, grateful she came. I could use it as a distraction from all the things that happened. As I freshened up, I could feel a slight nudge on the iron-clad barrier I built around my mind before going to sleep today at dawn to see if I was awake and, no doubt, checking in after the conversation we had last time. I gave a short explanation of just waking up and needing to get work done and would be busy today. We bid goodbye after that, and I hope that would be the last of today, or else I would end up demanding things they can’t give right now.
I returned to the kitchen to find Ji Young sitting with two fresh cups of coffee and some cookies and croissants spread out on the table. I sat on the opposite of her before holding the coffee cup close to my mouth and inhaling the scent.
“Eat up, you could use some of these. And we are going out for dinner today.” She said as she also started eating some of the baked goods.
“Dinner?” I asked as I sipped the coffee.
“Yeah, I booked one yesterday for us; we haven’t hung out in forever. And I have to buy some stuff too after that,” she explained as she went through her plan and ticked off her to-do list in her phone.
“Looking after me, making my coffee, and a date night just for us? Maybe I should just marry you, Ji Young. So marry me?” I joked with her. At that, she looked up with a very disgusted face and eyed me up and down. She paused for a moment and said,
“No, thank you; I have a type, and you don’t fit into it,” she said, keeping the joke going.
I held back a grin at that. “Woahh, I thought I was everyone’s type. Surely you are lying”
“Those people lied to you then,” she bit back. I let out a laugh at that. She really is a sunshine in my life, knowing exactly when to cheer me up.
She then continued her thoughts,“Besides, I want to live a long life with my spouse; you look like you are already halfway to the grave.”
“Ouch, a simple no would have hurt less” I grumbled, taking a big dramatic bite of the croissant as if marking my point.
“Did you actually bake these?” I asked pointing at the spreads on the table.
“hmm, I woke up extra early today for no reason and had nothing to do”
“ohhh~ Productive morning I see” I teased her for no reason.
“Shut it!” she grumbled with a pout. It was a well-known fact that she is the least productive in the morning; she would rather stay up until 3 am than wake at 5 am to finish work. And finding out that she had an early productive morning is as rare as finding gold in your backyard.
After that, we continued eating in the peaceful silence, relishing the absolute banger of backed good she bought in.
“Now that you have some coffee and carbs in your system, spill what happened. And if you give me half-assed truth of a nightmare again, I am willing to throw you through there; don’t tempt me,” she threatened, pointing at the window overlooking the outside.
“It’s just nightmares,” I mumbled.
“Ding dong, wrong answer. Try again,” She exclaimed loudly like those TV hosts on quiz shows.
At my silence and hunched posture, she sighed before coming over to my side and sitting on the chair next to me. She took my hand in hers. “Reeves, look here.” She commanded.
“You scare me sometimes. I only want to know what happened so the last February doesn’t repeat again. I almost lost you that day, and it scared the hell out of me. I don’t think I can survive another episode of that again. So please, let me help you or at least listen to you…” She begged, her usually composed voice cracking. At that, I kept my eyes down stubbornly onto the counter in front of me, scared of what I would find in her eyes. I knew very well by that tone of hers, her eyes would be filled, and that would make me want to cry.
“It’s nothing like what happened in February,” I explained, hoping that would at least ease her worries.
“Then what is it that has been eating you up from inside?” she asked instead.
“Promise to hear me out?” she held out her pinky finger; at that, I hooked it with mine. I didn’t pull my finger back, nor did she.
“I had a kind of fall off with them…” I whispered; even thinking about that made me want to curl up and bawl my eyes out until there aren’t any tears left.
“With your soulmates? About what?” she asked softly.
“Turns out that the friend groups, as he says, are all soulmates. Like bonded together as a group…” I explained as best as I could.
“And what is the problem with it? I know you; that alone cannot be the reason for a fight.”
Anger rose in me at the situation as I spat out the real reason, “I was fucking BENCHED in the bond like I was a football player whose coach decided that the player isn’t good enough.” I emphasized ‘benched’, filled with spite for the situation. “They had only figured out they are connected this year, so they say the bond is still fragile to hold another person in it.” At the end of the explanation, I noticed that my tears had fallen straight from my eyes to our intertwined hands as I kept my head down during the entire conversation.
“THEY FUCKING DID WHAT? YOU BETTER BE JOKING ABOUT IT!! WAIT, THEY BETTER BE FUCKING JOKING!” she yells as she removes our hands and starts pacing forward and back. I winced as her words rang in my ears.
“Tell me you are joking, please…” she begged, tears forming in her eyes.
I let out a hollow and humourless laugh at that, “Why would I even joke about that? I don’t want to lose them.. I hoped maybe they included me too in the decisions as the one already in the circle, not an outsider. God, I hope it’s like that; I hope they include me too in it..But what if they didn’t?”
“Ji young-ah, what will I do?” I sobbed into my hands. The dam finally broke. The unfairness, the weight of the situation I slept off, finally came back in full force. I took a ragged breath in when I couldn’t breathe but couldn’t control the sobbing. I bit my lips to stop sounds from escaping and found Ji Young sitting on the floor in front of me motionless, her tears suspended in her eyes.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.. Emma, pull yourself together. You are still here, you have a bloody bond with them. Who the fuck are they to decide that you aren’t compatible or too risky for the bond when fate itself chose you all together? No babe, this ain’t happening,” she insisted from her place on the floor.
“I-I can’t think of another explanation other than this, by what they said, you know?” I let out a wet laugh at that. “And above all, they were friends, Ji Young; they chose each other before fate forced them together as a whole, so you know where I would stand when I meet them, and on top of that, their youngest one collapsed due to the bond.. Maybe… I will always be considered an outsider there; no one on my side until the end. What if, for the sake of the bond, they just tolerate me enough, not giving me space as my own person? What if this was a cruel twist of fate against me? I don’t know what to do anymore…”
Ji Young collected the rest of the strength she had in her legs and came to me and plopped down on the floor in front of me. From this distance, I could see her eyes shining as the tears finally broke free from her eyes and her lips and chin trembling as she pressed her lips together to avoid making any noise. She opened and closed her mouth a few times; nothing but her sobbing voice came out. She decided to give up and just rested her head on my lap and hid her face.
Maybe I am so used to seeing Ji Young as my anchor and my person in this world; seeing her cry as the entire world fell apart was like my heart being torn apart. I couldn’t do anything other than cry along with her, for her tears, my heartache, the unfairness, and everything that went wrong with fate. No matter what anyone said, she was truly the only one who stood beside me, unwavering and unapologetic.
As time ticked by, I felt as if all my entire tears for a year had run out, and my throat was raw like sandpaper; I could no longer cry about the unfairness of the situation. The only thing I could do at this point was to sit and accept that this is life, and there is nothing I could ever do to change it. Ji Young had been quiet for a while, but I could still feel her tears soaking through my pajama pants. It was heartbreaking to see someone cry for you like this. I gently stroked her hair, hoping it would calm her down further, but it had an opposite effect as I felt more tears soaking up my pants faster.
I let her cry it out. Honestly, I could understand why. She was the only one who saw me collapsing a few times when the phantom pain because of the bond became too much, she was the one who held me tightly when I couldn’t differentiate the emotions between my telepathic soulmate and mine; she was the one who had to endure the horror of finding me lie on the bed motionless in February because of the pain and panic attacks, she was the one who carried me on her back down the stairs because according to her, the elevator take too much time, she was the one carrying the trauma of watching the helpless doctors trying to help me ease my pain but couldn’t do anything about it as they found nothing wrong but give high dose of painkillers hoping it would help.
Above all, she was the person who knew me from the age of 18, watching me dream and wish about meeting my soulmates, a match made just for me. At the age of 20, listening and fantasizing about the life we would build together with mine and her soulmates together because at that time, that was the most explainable because we were like two peas in a pod. So hearing that the person who I dreamt of spending a lifetime with is essentially pushing me out because the bond is too fragile is a hard hit to her heart.
“I am sorry for making you cry; I didn’t mean to..” I choked out. She twisted the piece of pants in her hands before tightening it.
“Emmaline Reeves, apologise one more time for things not in your control; I am for sure going to throw you out through the window,” she replied with a weak voice, too raw from crying and hiccupping. I nudged her lightly with my foot, hoping she would sit on the chair, but she stubbornly sat on the floor, head in my lap.
“Emma, you are your own person, not just someone’s soulmate. Just because some men failed to see the greatness and the love in you you could give, doesn’t make you worthless. I don’t care who the hell they are, but they are losing out on an amazing person here in searching for the so-called ‘stability’ as the calls it. You don’t make someone’s life fragile, Emma; you fix them, you glue them together with these hands and this heart because you can give that. The biggest artwork of your own of fixing with your big heart is me, the one sitting in front of you. So please, don’t lower your value because someone decided you are too difficult in the bond.” She finally looked up. Her face and nose were red and swollen, her eyes red-rimmed and tear streaks on her face.
“They are cowards. Just because the youngest collapse didn’t mean that the bond is fragile; maybe the problem is that the bond isn’t complete. Maybe they have to complete it for the so-called stability. They were protecting their youngest, but they still are cowards, afraid of what fate had already decided,” she added her thoughts.
She then turns to me, her face returning to her usual expression, tough and stubborn written all over it, “You should step the hell up and say that’s bothering you; that is the way you know the entire thing, as you mentioned before, they might have included you too in the bond decision they took, but you wouldn’t know if you don’t speak up”
Her words made sense, but there was another thing that kept popping up in my mind. Every single person in this population’s greatest fear-
“…Ji Young, I am afraid. What if-” I choked on the word, unable to bring it out. “What if I speak up about it and I know it may not happen, but what if I…get rejected?”
you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.
“Are you guys…..” I paused and cleared my throat. " Are you guys soulmates too? Like with each other?” I immediately regretted asking as the bond went quiet for a while. Although I could still feel my soulmate in my mind, he was quiet as if he wasn’t there at all. I sat there with the duvet covering me, listening to the light ticking of the digital clock on my nightstand.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid..I shouldn’t have asked them about it at all.’ I thought with regret as an apology was starting to form at my lips. I really need to control my curiosity and keep doubts to myself. It was a boundary I shouldn’t have crossed, even if we were soulmates.
“I am sorry for asking that. That was a bit too personal and insensitive of me…Sorry for asking,” I blurted out in full speed, my heart hammering, wondering if I messed up big time with that question.
“Oh, no, no, I was just surprised by that question,” He replied to my apology. “Besides, this guy even dropped his pen when I told him you asked that,” He added with a chuckle.
‘It didn’t fall!! I dropped it on purpose!!’ the other one wrote on my skin, the handwriting getting bad as he got defensive. That got a laugh out of me despite the situation.
“Besides, we needed to tell you about it, but we had a problem within, so it got delayed.” He explained clearly.
I felt a cold dread wash over me. That laughter instantly died in my throat. A problem? Between both of them? why? Was it because of my bond with them?
“………..Promise me you will not freak out and listen to me?” his words were hesitant, and not sure how to proceed with the talk.
That freaked me out instead. Did I accidentally cause a rift between them? Did the bond they had before break or strain? Did they get into a fight about who to talk to me and when? Instead of voicing that, I took a deep breath and replied, hoping that it is not what I think it is,
“I will try not to. But what is it?”
“Did you remember that I told you we have a friends group?” He asked slowly. I gave a confirmation, and he continued, “So, like around this year, Feb, this friend, youngest in our group, turned 21..But the thing was, that was when we knew he was a late bloomer, as he got his soulbond on that day…”
“A late bloomer?” I asked in confusion. The majority get the soulbond around 18 or like mine, around 10, depending on the type. Otherwise, people tend to believe that their bond will only show up when they physically meet their soulmate. So I am guessing the guy he talked about assumed the same and decided to sit out and wait. Late bloomers are rare; you wouldn’t hear about it around about it much these days.
Confusion rose in me, “Wait, what does that have to do with both of you?”
I heard a shaky inhale full of nerves at that, " I am getting to that part. So the bond forced its way into him because of the timing, leading him to a panic attack no one could calm him from and eventually losing consciousness due to pain.. One minute, we were all in the living room blowing out the candles, but the next moment, he was on the floor, sweating and unable to breathe. We searched everywhere on him for a soulbond, but when he was out, we couldn’t find it. We had to just…just watch our guy wither in pain on the bed as the doctor fussed over him, not knowing what to do about it.” his voice cracked at the end, and for no reason, I could feel tears forming in my eyes too.
It must have been very painful if he lost consciousness because of it and a panic attack on top of that. No matter how I think about it, I only feel sympathy for the guy for having to go through a lot because his soulbond was late.
He cleared his voice to continue, but none came, as if lost for words or didn’t know what to say. " It’s ok. You don’t have to continue if you can’t,” I whispered to him, trying to offer my comfort to him, hoping that would help.
“No, no. you have to know about it..So anyways, after he regained his consciousness, we found out that we all were connected. Not in a brotherhood sense of way but with the ‘red thread of fate’. Like all of our friends in a group together, not just one pair or two, just all of us..” He whispers the last few sentences, which I had difficulty catching.
Once I caught up to his words, my entire world came to a standstill and silent. The only sound in my entire house was the ticking digital clock and the distant him of the refrigerator from the kitchen.
Red thread of fate. All of them together. Like a web.
“All of you?” I breathed out, my voice barely making it across.
“Yes, all of us,” he confirmed. He let out a humourless laugh and continued, “That was the breaking point we all had during that time. Although we are okay now with each other, until then, unlike our artist and me, all of them thought they would have different soulmates outside the group, but fate really pulled out a Uno reverse and made all of us together. We thought we got along so well together because of our friendship and similarities in all the stuff we do, but we were bonded to each other as we were waiting for our youngest to catch up to show the physical reminder of the bond.”
My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, unable to form a word. The sympathy I felt for the guy turned into slow realization and terror at the revelation. My tears that were forming became still in my eyes, staring into the corner of the room.
A cold realization washed over me then. A morning in February…
I remember that one day very well. The one time I had to be taken to the hospital by Ji Young when she found me lying on the bed motionless because it felt like my airway was too constricted to breathe and had chest pain along with intense body ache. I wonder if their soulmate’s birthday was on this said day.
“When was that birthday?” I choked out the question.
“It was on-” That was all I heard before a ringing voice pierced through our ears at the same time, a physical reminder that no matter what, personal information that can lead to finding each other using this connection is not possible at all; after all, no one can disrupt the flow of fate. I winced in pain at that loud ringing through my head that even rattled my teeth a bit.
I could feel disappointment rising in me, along with all the frustration at the unanswered question. If I had found out the exact date, I could track down at least a few people around here whose birthday is on the same day and figure out if they had these reactions as mentioned. I now wondered if he was one of my soulmates too, if we had shared that pain.
“Sorry about questioning that…..So are you guys all soulmates now?” I asked tentatively, afraid I was overstepping a boundary I didn’t know existed.
“Don’t apologise, it slipped my mind too when I told the date..” He brushed off the apology, “Yes, we are soulmates….”
“Oh” was the only word I could force out of my throat.
“I am sorry for not telling you sooner. The boys freaked out because no one expected it to happen and no one was ready to sit and talk about it; everyone just danced around that fact, and some of us drifted apart because they didn’t know how to proceed with the bonds within the group itself, you know?” He laughed, but beneath it I could hear an underlying sadness about the situation that already passed but still hurt like an open wound.
“We took some time off spending all the time together; we split for a week or so doing our own things, going back home and cleared our heads. After that, we had like a heart-to-heart talk about what it means to us and how to go on from there. Safe to say, the talk went well, and we are together, kind of…” He trailed off with his voice low. He sounded anxious, unsure how I would respond to it.
The cold panic that was soothed came back slowly; that was when I realised that my telepathic soulmate wasn’t in our shared place but rather in my mind and place. I gently pushed him out to the shared place before he registered the rising doubts and panic in me.
But instead, I took a deep breath and comforted my soulmate; the one who needed comfort wasn’t me, it was him and my artist. They both need that comforting words. All I felt was sympathy towards them. To figure it out, they had to be away, broken off from each other, wondering if the bond was even real, wondering if it was a joke fate had pulled on them. But lucky for them, they came back together and started their relationship slowly and purely.
“By that kind of, I am guessing you are still figuring out where everyone is standing on this, or something else?” I asked softly, careful not to overwhelm him.
“Our other soulmate has another soulmark like us, like outside the group. And then there is you. We were figuring out how to.. you know, find a correct footing for us without complicating stuff with our individual bonds.” He explained, taking time and thinking and re-thinking about the correct words and phrases to use.
Another soulmate other than me?
That means I am not only the stray bond in the group..That thought gave me relief, that even caught me off guard. Was I scared of being the only outsider in that big web of soulmates they have? Especially since they have been friends since before the bonds even showed up? Where would I even stand in this bond when all of them knew each other before as friends first and then as soulmates before I even existed? Maybe I am just afraid that I might be pushed aside in my own bond, intentionally or unintentionally. And when that happens, I don’t want to be alone. Maybe another soulmate being there would be more helpful, relatable, and not feel lonely in the soulbond.
Keeping that big and ugly insecurity inside me tightly wrapped inside my mind so as not to leak into the shared space or, even worse, his own mind. I don’t want to add more problems within them by projecting my own insecurity.
“And?” my voice kept kind but neutral, hoping that he didn’t catch the change of emotions in me.
He let out a shaky breath at that. “ we feel like the bond is too fragile to hold an extra person at this given time, you know? With our youngest collapsing and shaking up the bonds, everyone is on the edge. And on top of that, the strain on the bond because of the break we took. I fear…I fear that one more of them would throw us out of the bond for good, not because of rejection but because we couldn’t take it and be strong.”
If so, how sure am I to meet them, my soulmates? If they have decided that it’s fragile and unstable, how am I going to meet them? Will I ever be accepted into their tightly knit circle? During that discussion, was I considered an outsider of the bond, whose mere presence would throw the bond off, or was I included in that discussion like another person who shared a bond with two of them?
What about me?
What if the pain bond I share with a soulmate is their youngest? Will I still be considered an outsider? Will I be accepted into the group if they knew the pain I had will also become his pain? Will they resent me for making their youngest suffer? Or worse, will they blame the late awakening pain he had on my bond with them, my two soulmates?
I almost asked that question, but instead, " Your bond within the soul group isn’t fragile; you guys are strong enough to carry it. If fate had decided you all would do good as connected, then it will. Don’t worry too much about that,” I then added with a laugh, " I mean, you guys survived February and also the breaking off and re-bond with each other, so yeah…”
For a long time, all I could hear from his side was silence, a total static silence, nothing more. I thought he fell asleep as the lost sleep caught up to him. I then felt the sensation of the pen pressed against my hand from my artist and looked at it to see him writing. “Thank you for saying that, truly. We needed to hear that from you after everything.”
I gripped the duvet tightly in my hands, my lips trembling slightly. I didn’t know how to respond to that. I stared blankly at those words until they blurred together. I pulled myself together before writing back, “No problem, that’s all I can do.”
I checked in for my soulmate in my mind, trying to pinpoint where he is. Sensing my presence there, he muttered, “Thank you, I really needed you to be okay with it happening too. I hope you aren’t mad about us keeping it away from you.”
At that, my heart gave a painful thud against my ribs. The weight of that gratitude pressed down on me, heavy and bittersweet. He was thanking me, grateful I understood them both and their decision, but how would he feel when he finds what’s in my iron-clad mind about it, the questions that increase every passing minute without any clear answer?
“I am not mad,” I whispered. Hoping my voice stays steady towards the end. “I mean, what reason do I have to stay mad about the decisions you guys took? I understand that it was to protect your youngest one and was scared of the sudden bonding.. I understand that you needed time. I really do…”
A long sigh of relief was set out from him. That relief was so immense that I felt as if the world’s weight was lifted off even from me, although I just share a connection with him. Guilt chewed me from inside at me at the thought of how I would l ever raise the questions, or in other words, insecurities, if this was the reaction I got simply from saying I understand?
I felt writings being formed on my skin and found a thank you with a heart next to it. I kept my reply the same as I gave my other soulmate.
After that, I bid goodbye under the pretext of due work, hoping that I would be alone to think for a while or even catch up on sleep because at this point, I have no control over how things will go. After all, it isn’t me who can alter the decision and make a decision on my soulmarks. It seems like it was already decided by them what to do with mine.
I could feel bitter bile threatening to rise at that thought alone, my mind running miles and miles alone. My mind replaying that conversation like a broken record that cannot stop by itself anymore. They had already sat down, talked for hours on end, and then came to a conclusion that another person might break the bond. The irony was that despite it being assigned by fate itself, it felt like a joke being played, and everyone understood, and I didn’t, and waiting for someone to explain what it meant. It was as if my entire future was already written by them, leaving me with no choice about it.
I was benched like those players I see at the football matches, a problem or a liability they decided is too risky to be introduced to.
I stared at the wall blankly, my lips trembling, but all the tears were already washed away, leaving me to just sit there and accept the situation. I almost forgot the real reason I woke up was because of a nightmare they comforted me from, not just this conversation. That comfort and peace I got was truly short-lived. Maybe I shouldn’t have questioned anything and kept my mouth shut.
‘Curiosity kills the cat, but the satisfaction brought it back’ kinda problem, but instead of satisfaction, I only got more heartbreak.
I pulled the duvet up to my chin and turned off my lamp, hoping that the sleep would take me away before I spiraled into more dangerous doubts. Before sleep enveloped me, I thought,
“That nightmare of the blood and death was less scarier than this reality.”
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࿐ if that ain't love then I don't know what love is (sfw!)
The morning light filtered through the curtains, painting stripes across the rumpled sheets. You blinked awake to the sound of chan humming off key in the kitchen, the sizzle of eggs hitting a pan.
You stretched, letting out a loud yawn as you got up, and padded toward the noise.
chan stood at the stove in nothing but sweatpants slung low on his hips, hair sticking up in every direction. The sight of him made your chest ache in the best way possible, even after all that time together.
“Morning,” you mumbled, leaning against the doorway.
Chan turned halfway, “Morning, sunshine,”
You shuffled toward the counter where chan’s phone layed face up, screen still glowing from whatever he’d last checked. “Can I borrow this?” you asked, already reaching for it. “wanna look up a pancake recepie”
“Mmhmm,” he said, "you'll find one in my screenshots somewhere"
Your fingers tapped the screen absently, pulling up his photos with the vague intention of digging through his messy screenshot folder — because of course Chan would save recipes there instead of, say, a notes app like a normal person.
before you clicked on the screenshots folder, though, something caught your eye.
You paused.
There was an entire album titled 'sunshine' with a yellow heart next to it.
Curiosity prickled at the back of your neck. You tapped it.
The album opened with a cascade of thumbnails, each one a candid snapshot of you in various states of sleep.
There you were, mouth slightly open, cheek mashed into the pillow like a squished marshmallow.
and then another one, mid snore judging by the expression, chin glistening with drool, one hand curled into a limp fist under your chin.
and another, your bonnet was half off, and you were prawled like a starfish across the mattress after he’d apparently rolled to the side to give you more space.
“breakfast is done,” Chan announced, sliding a plate onto the counter beside you with a clatter. You didn’t look up. “Sunshine?”
"bang christopher chan."
You turned the phone screen toward him, your finger jabbing at the incriminating evidence. "Explain this," you hissed, voice still thick and groggy with sleep.
Chan barely glanced at it before his lips twitched, very obviously trying to keep himself from laughing at you. He shoveled a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth, "Mm," he said, swallowing. "Yeah, that's you."
"Oh, wow, really?" You answer sarcastically, and he just nodded. "and why do you have approximately two hundred pics of me sleeping?"
Chan leaned back against the counter, crossing his ankles like this no big deal. "Because," he said, dragging the word out like it was obvious, "you're cute."
"Cute?" Your voice cracked. "Cute? Chan, I look like a deflated balloon."
He grinned, shoving a forkful of breakfast down, "heh, my deflated balloon," he said, snickering.
"You're lucky I love you," you muttered, scrolling through the album with increasing horror. "Because otherwise, this would be grounds for divorce." Chan just chuckled, unfazed, and leaned over your shoulder, his breath warm against your ear.
"Wait, wait — here, let me show you my favorite one," he said, plucking the phone from your grip before you could protest.
He swiped through the photos with the precision of someone who'd revisited them a hundred times, stopping on an image that made your stomach flip.
There you were, curled against him, your cheek smushed into the bicep he'd flexed just enough to make a pillow. Your mouth was slightly parted, a thin trail of drool glistening down his skin, he'd angled the camera to capture his own face in the background, grinning. The timestamp in the corner read '5:03 AM'
“See?” he said, voice dripping with triumph. “This one’s adorable. You make this little—” He mimicked your expression, puffing out his cheeks and squinting his eyes shut. It was so ridiculous you almost forgot to be mortified. Almost.
You smacked him square on the chest before snatching the phone from his hands and setting it face down. “That’s enough,” you grumbled, swiping the plate of eggs he’d made off the counter and started eating as well with a pout on your (puffy) face.
Chan just chuckled, unbothered, and nudged you with his hip. “You’re cute when you’re grumpy,” he said, “Also when you’re drooling. And when you’re—”
“If you finish that sentence, I will divorce you,” you muttered around a mouthful of eggs. They were perfect, damn him.
“You love me,” he sing songed, and it was so obnoxious you had to elbow him — but he just wrapped an arm around your waist and tugged you closer, pressing a kiss to your temple. “cmon, they’re literally proof I’m obsessed with you.”
“no, they're proof you’re a creep,”
a/n: husband chan is back ay ay, also I had a dream about this during my afternoon nap so there you go
The next week passed by in a blur of repeated routine. Reaching school earlier than usual because exams started, invigilating the exam classes, explaining the paper and redoing it for students after the exams, counselling the stressed and anxious students and parents alike. I also catch up with my soulmate every single day, both through my mind and ink. Ji Young calls me almost every day for a check-up disguised as a catch-up about her trip, but I didn’t have the heart to call her out on that; she was scared and anxious for me after hearing about the craziness that went down in a matter of a few weeks.
Everything went peacefully, and was weirdly suspicious because of the events that kept me occupied until now. That Saturday, the 17th of December, Ji Young officially came back from Japan for Christmas and New Year’s after a successful location hunt for her new drama. She also bought all the snacks that she thought I should try when she had them. I appreciated the sentiment, but now my apartment was full of snacks in a language I couldn’t even read to feed at least eight more people other than me.
“Emma, you have to try these matcha-flavored croissants!” Ji Young insisted as she kicked off her shoes at the entrance of my apartment after returning from work sh was called on last minute. She kept two boxes, which contained six, on the couch before closing the door behind her.
“Ji Young, I can’t possibly eat all those you gave me, you know?” I tried explaining, " And I don’t think anyone would want these little packets of wasabi-flavoured chips.”
She waved me off, “Those are gut-healthy snacks. Very good for you. You can share these to your students as gifts for their exams.”
“Maybe I can fill up the teachers’ snack boxes with these,” I told myself, looking at the colorful wrappers sitting on my kitchen table.
We both decided to lock in on our work. She had some final touches of the scripts, and I was grading the papers of classes that finished that exam. I hadn’t told Ji Young about my cousin’s new theory, fearing that it would make her more paranoid than she already was with the shaman and the random pain that appears. I looked at her, my heart thumping in guilt.
“This is for her own good,” I convinced myself for not coming clean about the situation.
Ji Young bid me goodbye after having dinner and helping me assemble some snacks to a box to take to school to share with my colleagues and students. I was in the middle of grading another paper when a sudden tiredness washed over me, and my body got too sore to do anything. I have gotten used to random pains I get throughout the week; thankfully, none was as painful as it was during the Busan trip.
I sighed and rolled my shoulders back, hoping to chase the soreness away, but it was persistent. After I returned from that trip, I accidentally went down a rabbit hole of ‘unknown soulmarks, ’ the one that only one will know once we meet the person in real life. I tried to convince myself of the possibilities of having another bond, but it was too unacceptable and unreal to believe, even for myself. I only started coming to terms with it after a heart-to-heart talk with both of my soulmates about the possibilities of other bonds than them, leaving out the intense pain, and they weren’t upset about it. I suspect that they also have some multiple bonds but have never admitted as much.
I had a feeling they were holding that back from telling me, protect me from spiraling down further, like how I did the same with Ji young. If my hunch is right and they also had multiple bonds, I strangely felt relief knowing that i wasn’t alone in the cosmic mix-up and supposed true theories.
‘One more paper and then bed’ i told myself as I pushed myself harder to finish the correction to enter the marks in the school’s portal tomorrow. But alas! The mild pain and the tiredness won over me as the paper in front o my blurred together, and my grip on my pen loosened. I capped the pen and stacked the remaining papers with a dejected heart before going to my bedroom after taking some vitamin medicine, hoping for my body to recover to finish my tasks. I couldn’t even talk to my telepathic soulmate properly before bed before sleep pulled me under.
————————————————————————————————————————
I sprang up in my bed from sleep with a start, my heart beating frantically. I could barely get a breath in through my nose. I looked around, panicking, losing all sense of reality, but I was still in my room. I kept my hand over my heart, but my heart was still fluttering like a lovebird inside the ribs of a cage. I could feel the uncomfortable feeling of sweat around my neck and forehead and my hands. I could feel the stickiness of my hands, turning to look at it, but it looked red, like blood was spilled on it. At that, confusion rose in me; I rubbed my hands against the duvet covering me, but the sticky feeling didn’t go away. I turned my hand to look at it, but the redness wasn’t there. I could feel the blood rushing through my ears, drawing out the frantic whisper of my soulmate trying to comfort me in my mind.
After counting to a hundred to calm my beating heart and focusing on my surroundings, my senses started to return. I looked at my hand again, but it had nothing on it except some residue of the seat I wiped away in that panic. Looking at the digital clock, I realized it wasn’t even morning yet; it was only 4. I turned on the bedside lamp and looked at my hands again.
Blood… on my hands… on my face… my throat dry and raw as if I had screamed. The weight of a person on my lap. The coldness of the floor I was supposedly sitting on….The feeling of a fluttering pulse dying out. My heart aching as if I was the one hurt..Tears falling on the person in my lap…eyes closing…. That person dea-
“It was only a nightmare, only a nightmare’ I told myself in the dark bedroom. I could only recollect that from the nightmare. It wasn’t a nightmare; it wasn’t all fuzzy and distorted like all the nightmares or dreams I had. It was too real; it was like I was in the dream but couldn’t do anything about the situation, like sitting in an automated car or machine.
But I could still remember feeling the warmth of the blood, the metallic smell that takes over when the blood flows too much, the stickiness of the blood after it clots. The weight of a person who lost all mobility, like when asleep. The blood overflowing through my fingers, which were pressed on the wound. I could remember screaming and crying as I was pulled away.
That person wasn’t going to sleep; he was dying… and the blood was in my hands…
I could feel my stomach churning at that thought. Hypothetically speaking, Did I kill that person in my dream? But who was it? Was it really me or someone else? Who even was that person? I could barely make out the face; it was all blurry, like the faces of classmates you forget after years after school.
“Love, please, pull out! It’s over! Please…” my soulmate begged through my mind. But he was barely audible through the thoughts and the panic running through me. I could feel my eyes filled with tears at the nightmares I saw and worse, felt. No matter how much I tried to focus on his voice, it was getting blurred out by the sound of blood rushing through my ears and my heart beating.
“It’s me, It’s over, love; it was just a nightmare… it wasn’t real. You are in your bed, in your apartment, please come back here, it wasn’t real,” he pleaded. He pushed harshly against my own space inside my mind I set up when I wasn’t responding to him to get me. He pushed against all the thoughts sprinting and called out to me.I barely made a nod, then remembered he couldn’t see me and gave a short yes in response.
“Sweetheart, breathe with me yea? In and…hold it…out..” he instructed clearly. I followed his lead, drawing a breath in. But it was more difficult than I thought. My lungs felt too constricted and suffocated to draw a breath in properly. It came as a short gasp. My airway was way too constricted. Every breath I took hit the back of my dry throat, and they come back as a cough.
“I can’t breathe,” I choked out, still trying my unsuccessful attempt to draw a breath in.
“I am here, focus on me. I got you, love…” he said, his presence trying to hold my fractured mind together, “We will try again on 3, come on. Don’t think about anything, just focus on doing what I told you…,” he reassures.
After three failed attempts of taking a deep breath, I could finally match my soulmate’s rhythm. We continued for a while, taking deep breaths together. When I no longer felt the burning sensation in my throat or the difficulty drawing a breath.
We stayed in silence for sometime, just existing with each other. I felt a tingling sensation and looked at my hand in time to see my soulmate drawing a puppy, a smiling one with lots of star. What surprised me even more was when the plain doodle with black pen was filled with brown for the puppies and yellow for the stars.
“He is with you, right?” I asked him in my mind.
“Yeah, he is here-Wait, hold on…” he paused, thinking. Most probably refreshing his memory, thinking if he had told me about knowing my other soulmate and turning to ask the other guy to see if he snitched on them. I let out a snort at the imagery that popped up in my head.
“Who told you about that?” He asked instead of answering me.
“It was a bit too obvious, actually; both of you really talk to me almost at the same time, like rarely overlapping the timing with each other, like they plan when to talk and who. I would have thought it was just a coincidence, but his confusion about who told me about it just confirmed it.
“You both are too obvious not to know,” I laughed. The guy was speechless for a second. I looked down at my hands and saw him scribbling, “you knew?” with a shocked face. I looked at the side table for my pen I usually write on my skin and drew a smiley face just to rage- bait him without any clear answer.
“I had my own doubts; you both aren’t as slick as you thought, you know?” I rectify. My artist drew a stick figure with its back turned on my skin, a clear indicator that he was not that happy I called them out for being obvious. I laughed at his action.
I smile to myself knowing that those two are probably there somewhere around in a room, sitting together and chatting to each other while communicating with me in their own way. It was a relief to know that the two anchors that pull me back to reality know each other and have each other. Although the cold panic that washed over me after the nightmare didn’t disappear completely, this was a distraction from it.
I adore them
“Are you mad at us for keeping this for too long? I swear we didn’t mean to. We didn’t want you to feel trapped by talking all over you at the same time, overwhelming you with both of us..” he explained in my mind, a nervous stutter in the middle and a quiet laugh at the end at himself.
“Why would I even be mad at you when you didn’t tell me that to protect me? Either way, I should be the one who should be sorry for waking you up,” I said, feeling a little guilty for making them stay up.
At that, both of them went on and had a very long rant about being there for each other when it’s needed and whatnot, both in my mind and on my skin. That’s when I realized that my telepathic soulmate was dictating everything I was telling him in through my thoughts to my other soulmates. I watched my hands as a new doodle began to take shape, this time a stick figure bonking the head of another stick figure.
“I hope I am not asking a too personal question…,” I trailed off after they finished their lecture, not sure if I should bring this up. My soulmate sighed and mumbled something about not understanding what he meant before replying,
“No love, there is no personal question that and this in here; ask anything,” He reassures me.
I pressed my lips together in thought about how I am going to ask them the question. This curiosity is either going to end badly with them thinking I am very weird or with a confirmation of my hunch I have. My heart started beating a bit too much again, but this time it wasnt because of the nightmare.
“Are you guys…..” I paused and cleared my throat " Are you guys soulmates too? Like with each other?”
⚛︎ pairing: (scientist!boyfriends) stray kids x (girlfriend) female reader
word count: 694
[ warning ]
time travel au, poly relationship, and not proofread
part 2 here
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This should have never happened in the first place! The sequence of events that just so happened before were unfathomably haunting. If only they listened, if only they would’ve stopped when you asked them to. But no, they didn’t do any of that. Your advising words had fallen on deaf ears and now, you’re no longer here with them.
It was in the previous month where your eight boyfriends decided that they wanted to start on this whole new project. A project so great, so advanced, that the world would change if they discovered such technology existed. Building a time travel machine wasn’t unheard of though the possibility of it actually succeeding was slim to none. Yet this didn’t deter any of them from trying.
However, to their and your own surprise, their planning and adjustments to the machinery was working. Though there’s always the need to add further improvements which meant a lot of their time was spent isolated in the labs. It wasn’t a problem for you at first, but when you realized that weeks have gone by since you saw them, you asked them to stop for a while, to take a break, to just hang out.
To put more hurt onto your aching heart, they didn’t want to. Casually and dismissively brushing away your suggestions. They needed, they desired for this to work, it had to. It would be their greatest pride and joy in life without realizing the damages that they are causing towards themselves and to you in the process. At one point, you gave up trying to text or call any of them, knowing well you won’t get a response for the next few hours. Even if you did get one right away, it was written really dry or simply a single word response. So you decided to pay them a visit since you usually stay out of their lab to not interrupt their work flow.
As soon as their lab door opens, their heads are turned towards you.
“Y/N?” Chan calls out. “What are you doing here?”
“I came here to tell you all that I’m done, okay?”
“Baby, what are you talking about?” Hyunjin suddenly said nervously, moving away from his work station to step beside you.
“I want to break up. I can’t do this anymore.” You sighed disappointedly. “I never see you guys around and you’re always occupied by your work. So I think it would be better if we went our separate ways. That’s all I came here to tell you. Bye.”
That was everything you wanted to say, cause if you were to text them then the aftermath of that would cause a prolonged session of begging and pleading.
“Wait! Wait! Wait! Noona please think this through!” Jeongin cried out, holding onto your wrist.
“Jeongin, let go.” You tried shaking him off but his grip tightened.
“Y/N, Baby, Baby girl! Please.” Changbin pleaded.
“My decision is final. I thought about it long and hard, Changbin.”
The fact that you’re calling them by their names and not their nicknames was an extra stab to their heart.
“Don’t leave us, please don’t leave us!” Jisung knelt before you, hugging your waist.
“Ummm guys?” Seungmin said, stepping back cautiously.
“I am, Jisung. Now please let me go.”
“Guys?” Felix then warned.
“EVERYONE GRAB ONTO SOMETHING NOW!” Minho shouted, making everyone run towards something secure and strong.
Chan held you close but the time machine’s vacuuming power was overpowering, making your grip slide into his hold.
“C-Chan?” That was the last thing he saw and heard you say before your body was dragged into the time machine.
Unfortunately that’s when the portal closed.
“NO!” Jisung sobbed out, kneeling before the machine, placing both his hands onto the side as tears dripped to the ground.
“Seungmin, open the portal again!” Minho advised. “We have to get her!”
“We can’t! We don’t have enough power.” Seungmin sadly announced, seeing how the lights in their labs have dimmed out.
Nothing but the sound of their wailing filled the room.
“WHAT THE HELL” came out of my mouth as a screech, a very unsophisticated screech that made my cousins glance at us, questioning. Min-jun looked at me and them before flashing them a sheepish smile before turning to me.
“Think about it. It may be another one,” he insisted on his opinion, an opinion I would rather not hear and hope is not true. I looked at him and turned to look at the vast sea in front of me to conceal the mountain of emotions going through me. I could see that Min- jun also went to a deep thought at my silence.
“I am not saying this to scare you off but to remind you of the possibilities…”
Min-Jun oppa, you don’t have to turn everything into a thesis, you know? It can just be a muscle pull, after all we just ran after a heavy dinner.” I brushed it off with a laugh that sounded so fake to my ears, and I bet it does to his ears too.
I looked at the sea, looking exact different from the emotion I am going through. It looks calm and composed and the actions, the crashing of the waves easily predictable as it was set by nature unlike my life, so unpredictable and unstable that feels like the life trajectory changed with every breath I took.
“Anyways, tell me about the research you were going to explain before you got a very out of pocket idea that I have more soulmates and write a fictional story of my life.” I said with a humorless laugh, my voice straining.
Min-jun sighed at my denial before continuing where he left off,
“As I was saying, the past connection I told you about is just a small section, not explored enough to research more into it. It’s based on texts we retrieved from the last archaeological expedition. They got a book older book. It was basically what the loss of a soulmate feels like. The sad thing was, the soulmate didn’t have a natural death as far as we investigated into it; it looks like they were forcefully separated and killed.” He explained and then sighed, “It’s a sad story, but the book had a strange sentence: ‘In all lives I lived, this is exactly how it ends.’ That was one sentence that triggered this research. A tragic story.”
As his explanation ended, we both got lost in our own thoughts, staring ahead.
‘In all lives I lived, this is exactly how it ends’
‘A tragic story’
‘an old soul in a new body’
‘She was a shaman’
‘In all lives I lived, this is exactly how it ends’
The words kept repeating in my head like a broken radio unable to stop. I digged my hands deeper into my pockets, cold sweat breaking out of my hairline out of the sheer terror of the concept. I could hear my own heart beating in my ears, blood pumping loudly and clearly. I could feel my face and body heating up in response, a common reaction of my body to stress.
History of broken bonds. A history of killed soulmates whose unfulfilled love makes it to another timeline. A life, a bond built on that tragedy. And those words of the shaman which I brushed off as a mistake- what if-
What if-
Thinking about it, my heart gave another thump, and it hurts so bad. It was as if my own heart recognised something I hadn’t yet, and it’s responding on its own. The painful thumps of the heart continued for some time until I had to count till 10 in my mind and breathe.
My thoughts were cut off by my cousin calling us to get in the car. Min-jun turned to me, looking at me, his expression softened.
“Dahee-ya, whatever it is, promise to tell me when it gets too much of a burden for you to carry by yourself. I can help you carry that; you don’t have to figure out the entire world by yourself. Whether in here or when back home, I am only a call away from getting to you. Don’t lie to me and yourself nothing is bothering you; it is. I know you for a long time to know that. So do not lie to my face. You are precious to me; you are my sister I have been looking after, seeing you suffer is the last thing I wish to see.. So please….” He whispered the last part and cleared his throat.
At his words, I could feel a burning sensation of tears on the back of my eyes and my throat getting raw and closing up, a telltale sign of crying. I looked at him, my vision blurry. As I opened my mouth to tell him off or laugh it as before, hoping her didnt notice my onset tears in the dark, my voice refused to cooperate with me and didn’t come out. Instead I nodded my head and kept my head down.
“Let’s go,” He muttered as he stood up from his place and held out a hand for me. At that gesture and his sweet words, an overwhelming urge washed over me to just confess to him about everything- the shaman, the chances of my bond with a global star, the aching of my body that sometimes turns so binding that I can’t see anything.
But how can I ever tell him that? If my story, my soulbond, is a result of tragedy across timelines and lives, how dare I drag another person into this cycle? If what both Min-jun said and the shaman’s words are true, then how can I ever say that the sister he annoys but treasures so much, wouldn’t live a full life with her beloved? How can I tell him the sad but short story he read about the soulbond broken off unwillingly in the past may happen to me, of all people? How can I burden him by letting him know that his cousin has a ticking bomb in her, waiting to take her life away? How can I ever rob him of his peace by telling him that?
Instead, I bit my tongue and kept walking to the car where my cousins started blasting the heater. I walked into absolute chaos of song selection, a very passionate debate at almost midnight.
Do-Hyun looked at my face and then Min-Jun’s before asking, " Did he lecture you to an early grave already? Your face says you are done with his analysis of dead people and their love story.”
Min-Jun cast him an unimpressed look before getting in the middle of the car, leaving the door side for me. I got in the crammed car before closing the door, shutting the warm air in.
I wanted to laugh at his question, ‘early grave,’ he says. Only if he knew how right he was, I thought bitterly. For the rest of the ride, Min-Jun didn’t initiate any conversation with me, giving the privacy I wanted, but a small part of me wished he did talk, to keep my mind wondering in other directions.
As we pulled up in the driveway of the house at 12 am, fruits were cut up in the living room for us as snacks. Everyone quickly took a bowl before making it to the upper living room and pulling up pillows and blankets to sleep there with everyone while watching a movie. Everyone made a big huddle in the middle of the room and pulled on a movie that the twins promised was hilarious. I highly doubt it because halfway through the movie, I realized the chatter had died down and looked around to see everyone asleep.
I stayed on my side of the room for a long time, staring at the ceiling and then turning to my side a couple of times, waiting for sleep to come. After losing count of the number of times I counted sheep, I gave up, took my blanket, and made my way to the balcony.
I paced around the balcony for sometime and then sat on the swing there after closing the door quietly behind me. The cold wind that blew so strongly before now has turned into a gentle breeze that came now and then, making it easier to sit there without shivering to the bone. I don’t know how long I sat there staring into space. I thought about everything Min-Jun said, what the shaman said, and the discovery of mine and Ji Young. I was caught off guard when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning back, I came face to face with my grandfather. I didn’t even hear the door behind me open. I patted the seat next to me, but he just shook his head and stood there.
“Can’t sleep either?” His calm voice rumbled. I shook my head in response.
“What about you, Grandpa? Can’t sleep either?” I asked him, turning to look at his face. He looked at my face with a grin he often wore before cracking a joke to all.
“Well, I could hear a certain young lady upstairs pacing and restless so I had to check who made her lose her sleep”.
I mentally facepalmed at myself. My grandparents’ room was right below the balcony, so they would have woken up to the amount of pacing I did before sitting down. I turned to him, apology on my lips, but he looked like he was waiting for me to get the joke and laugh. I blinked at him twice before huffing a laugh and standing up to playfully bow to him in apology.
“I told you your jokes are too bad, you know? People don’t understand if you are joking or not.” A voice said behind us. I turned to find both my grandmas standing there, wearing a cardigan matching my grandpa’s, making me smile at their cuteness. And there was a tray in Grandma Park’s hand with three cups on it.
“Wow slander from my own wife. How can I live?” he replies sarcastically. Then he turned to look at me and turned to them, " Besides, our Da-Hee loves my joke, right? She laughed!”
“Yes, I do,” I chimed in, grateful for the distraction.
“See? My jokes aren’t bad. You both don’t have a sense of humour like her! Oh, Da-hee, what am I going to do without you? No one will get my jokes; then I will have to spend my life without having to hear you laugh at my amazing jokes!”
“You know why she laughed? If she doesn’t, you will go all the way to her school to deliver the punchline until she finally laughs,” Grandma Lee said as Grandma Park kept the tray on the small patio table next to the swing.
“Well I would do that-wait, where is my teacup?” He asks that made me take a look at the tray, counting the cups. one. two. three.
“When did you start drinking herbal tea?” my grandma Lee asks instead.
" You got a point there. Goodnight, guys,” He says before kissing my forehead with a pat on my shoulders. He left the three of us alone there, shutting the balcony door to prevent cool air from entering.
“Sorry to wake you guys at this time of the night. I wasn’t thinking straight.” I apologised, guilt weighing heavily for disturbing their sleep.
“No one cares. It’s not every day you all come to visit us to disturb our sleep schedule.” Grandma Lee said before handing out the teacups. I thanked them before moving to the side on the swing, making space for them to sit.
Grandma Park raised an eyebrow before pushing me to the middle so both of them could sit on my side. I took my teacup closer to my lips, enjoying the steam it let out. The tea smelled amazing- sweet from the honey she added and the earthy smell of the herbs. I took a sip and regretted it immediately as it burned my tongue. I winced in pain as the hot liquid that I swallowed reached my stomach. I turned around when I heard a snort and found Grandma Park laughing quietly. I pouted a bit, then that transformed into a smile when both of them sat on my sides, sandwiching me in between them.
We sat there for some time in silence, sipping our tea and enjoying the company. I sat there with the warm cup in my hands and their body heat radiating to mine, giving me the comfort I didn’t know I could get from it. I basked in their warmth for a moment until I couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore.
“Helmioni, do you believe in shaman and their power?” I asked tentatively.
“ We never went to them… So I don’t know much” Grandma Lee answered.
I clutched the ceramic cup closer to me, sighing before saying, “You know, about 2 weeks ago I met a lady in the park..” I trailed off as I was pulled into that memory.
They both didn’t say anything but a light hum from them, showing they were listening, urging me to take my time and continue. “She looked soo old and frail, but the moment she saw my face she started crying, muttering weird things”
“What weird things?” I could hear a barely concealed worry in that tone Grandma Park used. I felt
“Something about forgetting her, some old soul in a new body things.” My grandmothers exchanged worried glances on top of my head.
“She must be quite old then to mistake you for someone, right?” Grandma Lee asks, definitely not liking the direction of the conversation.
“Her children came right after and explained that she had dementia and often talked about the things in the past, and that didn’t change the fact that she was a shaman before she became sick. And that lady’s eyes, that doesn’t look like someone with a memory problem, at least not when she was talking to me. I know exactly how they look when they lose their memory during dementia; I saw that look before, this is nothing like it- I swear!”
My voice rose a pitch in the pure desperation and helplessness I felt about the situation. I looked down at the cup in my hand and drank the rest of it in one go, my throat no longer burning as the tea cooled down enough. I wanted them to believe me, at least acknowledge I was right about being paranoid about that lady. Surely, since grandmothers know all about the world, they should know about this too.
My words hung in the air as they processed my words, and I let them; we can’t rush words of wisdom after all. Before they could say something, I whispered,
“She asked if I have met them.. My soulmates.” My voice broke out in the end. I traced the flowers on the teacup to keep my mind and hands occupied.
“And Min-Jun’s theory this morning…That added the fuel to the fire, right?” Grandma Lee asked, ever the perceptive one.
“And you connected both and freaked out,” Grandma Park concluded. It was scarily fascinating to witness both of them completing each other’s thoughts no matter how many times witnessing it.
“You have heard about that theory?” I exclaimed. I didn’t know my grandmas would be invested in academia.
“I had to know why Min-Jun turned the whole library here upside down to find something related to soulmates,” Grandma Park explained. That makes sense. Now that saves me the trouble of explaining the troublesome theory to them.
We were quiet for a moment, just watching the trees move in the cold breeze now and then. Then Grandma Lee took my hand in hers and held it to her lap.
“Da-Hee, you know, this world is full of different people; shamans are one of them. Because of their powers, they don’t see past, present, and future as different but as one entity existing. And it surely didn’t help the fact that the shaman you came across had dementia.” She explains softly, her hands stroking mine in her lap. Grandma Park gently took the teacup away from my hand, and that’s when I noticed I had been fiddling with it for some time to keep my hands busy.
“And Min-Jun, sometimes the things in the past should stay there themselves. It doesn’t do anything good by comparing it to this life. He might have said that in the excitement of finding something worthy, but that doesn’t mean everything will repeat itself..” She paused before continuing her talk.
“I am not going to sugarcoat and say it’s fine. I can understand that concern, and I hope, I really hope it isn’t true. Maybe the theory Min-Jun said is just another theory those people dug up, and the same with the tragedy he told. Leave it in the past, and it definitely doesn’t define your future with your soulmates. And the shaman was too old to differentiate between the past and present. And what if you are an old soul? You are here now, with us, in between us in Busan, not in the past; that counts for something.”
Grandma Lee’s words gave me the comfort I desperately needed. The calmness and the sureness in her voice anchored me back to the present. although the cold coils in my stomach didn’t entirely go away, it slowed down to her comforting words. I sat there thinking about her words.
In a way, she is right. Maybe I am just thinking a lot into it. Maybe the theory was another theory without real proof. And even if it was real, there isn’t a real guarantee it will happen to me or happened to me if that shaman’s words that I am an old soul is real, other than the traitorous heart almost leaping off my chest in response to that thought.
“She is right,” Grandma Park mutters, “You are our child Da-Hee, not anyone else’s and definitely not a ghost of the past.” She reassures me.
“Besides, if we ever meet that shaman, she will have to learn why she shouldn’t have messed up with our grandchild!!” She added fiercely. At that statement, me and grandma lee look at each other and chuckled.
I could almost picture that. My sweet grandma in her oversized cardigan storming up to the park where I met the shaman just to give her some peace of mind. I bet the shaman doesn’t remember what she told me and stares at my grandmother as she goes on and on about torturing her poor grandchild. I let out an unguarded laugh at that mental image, this time the laugh real and loud that surprised even me.
That was the wisdom I needed and wasn’t disappointed at all. I kept my head on Grandma Park’s shoulder, my one hand still in my other grandma’s hand.
“I will be going back on the afternoon train tomorrow…” I mumbled, my words getting slurred together as I grew tired. After the talk with them, all the adrenaline keeping me up until now washed away, leaving me sleepy.
“Then let’s go sleep in the bed. It’s too cold to sleep outside like this.”
They stood up with a sigh and ushered me into the living room with the tray in Grandma Lee’s hand. I looked around for the place I was in before I left, but it was taken by someone else. I sighed internally before untangling the limbs of my cousins to make a place for me, too tired to walk to the bedroom. I only remember lying down as I was knocked out right after, my mind finally at peace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, this is chapter 7!!
Thank you for reading!!
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“Well, it’s just a talk, honestly. Like if the soulmates are connected in this life as it was in the past. That past life, if that exists…“ He paused and took a mouthful of food and then continued, “The theory is like since soulmates are compatible in this life for almost everyone, and since the bonds run deep, it may have been across time, saying that bonds are not randomly assigned at birth, but a deeper connection. Well, of course, there are setbacks to this theory; it’s not formed and would likely stay as it is because the theory of past life itself is debated and rejected by many..”
His voice was calm and neutral, as if he was giving a lecture at the conference rather than at a breakfast table. Contrary to his calm demeanor, I looked the exact opposite. My stomach was doing violent flips, cold sweat was breaking out of my hairline, and my breath was stuck. I forced the chopsticks and spoon down from my hands, fearing that it will fall from my trembling hands, and felt my knees getting weak.
I was taken back to that Wednesday evening when I met the shaman and her words. Old soul. You shouldn’t have forgotten me. I forced myself to look unbothered by it and turned to him. I cleared my throat and asked him, “Will you tell me more about it when you have the time?”
He looked surprised and was caught off guard by my request, “Oh sure? I didn’t think you would be interested, you know? Like into academic research, but yeah, I will fill you in”
“And are you sure you are fine? You look pale, really pale,” He commented as he pointed to my face. I touched my face with the back of my hands to feel its cooler than normal. I smiled at him to ease his worries and was about to reply when Grandma Lee cut in,
“Min-Jun-ah, don’t torture that poor kid with your academic lectures at the table too. I bet she had enough of that from her school itself, right Da Hee?” I nodded at her with a smile.
“Aww, come on, grandma- she loves it, right? Besides, this is a nice time to talk about history, right?” At his question, everyone let out a big groan. The high school twins started to protest that learning history at school is enough and not needing it at the breakfast table too.
After that, the conversation around me stirred back to normal. But my mind kept going back to his words. If what he said was true, then most likely the shaman’s were true too. It shouldn’t freak me out, but it does. It terrifies me. Having a soulbond itself is a very large concept that takes time to understand, but now the chances of these bonds breaking the rules of space and time, surviving through deaths and graves to bond in another lifetime, is an even more terrifying concept, one that I can’t even wrap my head around. I continue eating the food in front of me, but the comforting taste of the spices turned bland to my tongue, and the soup feels like sandpaper to my throat.
As the breakfast finishes up, the dining room turns into a chaotic war-field where everyone was trying to get the job done. My aunts, my mom’s sisters and sisters-in-law, shooed away the younger cousins from the table and carried the dishes back to the kitchen. I carried my bowl back to the kitchen just to have something in my hands and do something to keep my mind from spiraling any further.
My bowl was ripped from my hands by my aunt Mi Young, she offered me a smile and waved me away, “Go and play in the pool. It’s perfectly warm in the pool in this weather.”
I went inside my shared room with Jee-ah to get my swimsuit and found her reading a book. I was about to call her out for her studious attitude when I found that it was a novel, not anything study-related. That was a missed opportunity to tease her.
She came up to me and hugged me before even asking anything. After a long time, she finally let go of me go, “You looked like you needed one,” she commented before leaving the room with her book and sunglasses, giving me the privacy to change into my swimsuit. I guess I really looked like a truck ran me over. My telepathic soulmate checked in on me when I was changing my clothes. He said he was going to sleep more since it was a day off for him, and he wanted to check in because I told him the day before about my trip here. After bidding goodbye, I changed into my swimsuits, threw a shirt over it, and left the room.
I found Jee-ah waiting for me outside. She hooked her arms with me as we walked to the patio outside. We caught up on our daily life. Of all my cousins, Jee-ah was closest in age and situation. Both of us have jobs and are similar in most aspects of life. As we walked closer to the pool, the loud chatter and laughter were heard, and that instantly gave me energy I didn’t know I needed, helping me forget about this morning’s conversation with Min-Jun.
I found all of them in the large pool, having a ball with them. Looking at them arguing, they still seemed to be in the phase of deciding the teams. It will take some time to decide; I will give them half an hour at most. Seeing it would not be resolved any time soon, I went to the deeper end of the pool and dived in with a splash.
The warm water on my cold skin gave me the shock I needed to pull myself out of my mind. I let gravity do its work of pulling me down to the floor of the pool. As my feet hit the bottom, I had a selfish wish to just stay in there forever, floating in absolute silence forever, with nothing to worry about; just the stillness I crave. Down there, I had nothing to worry about other than holding my breath and timing when to come up; I didn’t have to worry about schoolwork, past lives, shamans, nothing at all.
I pushed myself up and swam up, breaking the surface of the water at the edge. I looked at my cousins, and they were still deciding on the great team selection. Seeing me there, Do-Hyun, Jee -ah’s older brother, yelled, “Let’s make Da Hee make the teams! She has experience teaming high school students for assignments!”
Hearing his argument, everyone agreed to it. After making them promise to agree with my decision, I divided all 14 cousins into teams of two. by then, Aunt Kyun-ah and Mi Young came in and decided to be the referees. Just like that, the whole match began. For an hour, there was nothing but the sound of shouting and splashing the water. The physical exhaustion of swimming, shouting, and throwing the ball seemed to have anchored me back to reality.
After that, we spent the afternoon eating lunch and catching up on the plans. We often meet on Christmas too, but that time the crowd is larger with all the soulmates of the cousins who met them already. By the time it was time for dinner, a plan was made to go to the beach at night after dinner. Everyone agreed to it, knowing it was a rare opportunity.
After reaching there around nine after the very big dinner, everyone started playing tag with each other. Given the time at night, the beach was almost empty except for some people quite far away, which gave us the freedom to run around.
The mid-December wind hit me on the face, but with the amount of running I was doing, it felt like nothing. I could hear distant yelling of my cousins who got chased by Do-Hyun at lightning speed. Considering I was a bit further from the chaos of the game, I stopped to take a breather.
' This was very much needed, more than I ever thought,’ I thought as I turned to look at the waves crashing to the shore and retreating just to crash again. The sound of the waves crashing to the shore and the slight salty smell of the ocean drowned out the lingering voices in my head. I looked back to find the faint figures of my cousins running, illuminated by the distant streetlight.
“Unnieee, watch out!” I heard Ye-jin scream at me as Hyun-woo charged towards me with a wild grin. I turned around on the sand and sprinted in the other direction. I dodged his outstretched hands by an inch or two before he decided to go after an unassuming Min-Jun. Seeing I was no longer the target, I slowed down to a jog and sat on one of the smooth rocks on the shore. After some while, all of them stopped the game and decided to sit on the sand, talking and catching their breath.
Looking at the vastness of the sea, so deep and endless, the concept of time and space feels the same. So endless, with lots of possibilities. I wonder how soulmates can find each other in every lifetime, like Min-jun said, in that infinite vastness? Is the soul bond that strong that it can survive the very fabric of time? That concept of the soulbonds surviving feels like looking into a black hole, a whole of nothing discovered, but it still fascinates and terrifies scientists and people alike when came across it. I have never thought about the love between the soulmates being so huge that it can defy the order of the universe. Or the very universe is wrapped around the concept of finding the ' one ' for you, willing to twist time and preserve the marks and longing echoes of souls?
I felt a tingling sensation on my wrist and found my artist scribbling down some lyrics there, no doubt writing it down before the idea flew away from his mind. Maybe he isn’t in his workplace to scribble on my hand? I thought as he continued for some while, ending it with a heart and ‘I love you’.
“It must be your soulmate…” Turning around, I found Min Jun coming to me, hugging the padded jacket to himself for warmth. I pulled my sleeves down before humming in agreement. “I was hoping you would meet your soulmate this time.”
“Why?”
" To complain about you obliviously!!” He exclaimed. A startled laugh escaped me at that unexpected answer.
“Anyway, about our research…What would you like to know?” he questioned as he pulled out his phone. Curious, I peered in and saw him opening a PDF. I looked at him in disbelief.
“What? I have everything ready in case someone asks me about it. It’s not weird, don’t make it weird, please.” He complained. I looked at the phone again and shook my head, keeping my mouth shut, because if someone could make sense of what the shaman actually meant, if it’s true or not, it’s him.
Before he could start explaining, a sudden pain just emerged from my side, like I pulled a muscle on my side. I let out a hiss as tears started to gather in my eyes at the intensity of the pain as I doubled over the rock. I could hear Min-Jun’s worried voice over my pain, but I couldn’t answer him, barely able to take a breath. After what seemed like an hour, in reality that was just five minutes, the pain started to disappear, making it easier to breathe again.
" You ok? what was that Da hee?” Min-Jun’s worried voice broke over my thoughts.
I tried my best to smile, showing I was unaffected by it. “Pulled a muscle. It started happening a lot these days. Maybe I am getting old,” I wondered as I stared ahead.
“That doesn’t look like normal pain for a pulled muscle; it looks like..” He trails off. I turned to look at him but found him thinking deeply. That got my attention.
“It looked like a soulmate reaction…”
I looked at him unimpressed, “Yeah right..I would like this moment to remind you I have three soulmates- a telepathic link, an artistic link whose work appears on my skin, and a very normal first-words tattoo.” I lectured him in my best ‘Ms.Kim’ voice, holding up three fingers to his face to emphasize that.
“And? It’s not like you can’t have more,” he rebuts.
“What are you on about?”
“Think about it, our family has a long history of many soulmarks on a single person, not just our grandparents. Trust me, I read through the entire family library to know that. So it’s not a far-fetched idea for you to have another one.” He explains.
I looked at him, speechless, and him thinking it was a cue from me to continue, “And that looks like a pain bond. Like, if your soulmate gets hurt, you also get pain in the same place for some time.”
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you and jisung have been bestfriends for years — you do everything together, and when you both take an interest in minho, a friend of yours, well logically, you both go for it — together!
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You and Jisung never had a typical relationship.
Sure — you're best friends, you've gone through a lot together. College, that first job, second — everything.
Through countless break ups, often lead on by the fact of how close you are, boyfriends and girlfriends of both of you not particularly understanding that you both are just friends.
Well — not just.
You never told them about the countless times in between relationships, when you're both drunk, hell even when you're not.
Nobody knows, but everyone guesses, suspects anyways. Anyone who meets you both assumes your dating, you say you aren't but make no moves to prove them wrong.
Everyone in both of you groups both knew the weird dynamic between you, new people tried to understand but quickly gave up.
Until Minho.
Minho, a work friend of Jisung, quickly infuriating the group, he's great, weird in a way that draws you in, handsome in a way words cant describe.
You're not saying you're a mind reader but you are definitely catching a vibe instantly.
The moment Jisung introduced Minho to you, you notice. The glaces that linger moments too long, the awkward laugh Jisung lets out only with you usually.
It's not jealousy of Jisung — no, more envy.
Because despite this weird dynamic with Jisung, you care about him, you want him. It's why no relationship truly lasts because all you believed you needed was each other — maybe you were wrong.
Jisung on the other hand notice things too, he knew you and Minho well, you both were the closest people to him in his life and he catches on quickly.
Minho, who typically doesn't start conversations out of the blue, always does with you, paying extra attention, nodding along.
Now Jisung would never say anything, no he doesn't want to bring it up because what if he's wrong — or worse, right?
Because Minho isn't like anyone else you would date, he would stick around because he understands to an extent your relationship with Jisung so he wouldn't be threatened right — that's why all your previous relationships ended, because they were insecure but what if he loses you —
Okay, now Jisung said he wouldnt mention it to Minho but you — you were his best friend of course he was going to tell you!
A random Sunday night is when it all clicked in both of your heads, both of you feeling things, silly doubts and one common thing — you both wanted Minho, and each other.
So you plotted, poorly, with no actual plan — basically just going off booze and a whim.
A 'strategically' planned night out, Jisung said it was fool proof but you cant help but be apprehensive.
You randomly messaged Minho, who replied instantly in your little three person group chat you made awhile ago.
Somehow all of your friends couldn't make it so it was just you, Jisung and Minho.
This of course made so much sense in Jisung's mind, you couldn't fight him on it.
At the bar you're focused, well as focused as you can be while slightly tipsy, not drinking a lot as you know what's hopefully going to happen.
You're at the bar, grabbing a round for the three of you, Minho yet to question why its just the three of you so far. When you notice they arent there — looking around at the near by tables to check that maybe you were just losing your mind but no, they weren't anywhere.
Checking over the obvious places, calling out their names you hesitantly check the males bathroom, not in the mood to get flashed, what you find is so much better.
Jisung pressed against the bathrooms sink, his lips attached to Minho's, way too lost in the moment to notice you right away, his hands tangled in his hair, Minho has his knee pressed between Jisung's thighs keeping them parted, faintly hearing a moan escape Jisung's lips.
Only once they hear the bathroom door close do they freeze, looking at you standing in the doorway, Minho looking shocked, a bit unravelled, Jisung however looks so far gone, his hair messed up and lips pink and glossy.
Almost like time stilled for a moment, all outside noises quietening for a second. Only when you smile a bit, taking in the sight of them do they seem to regain functionality.
"You started without me Sungie?" You drag out the question with an almost whine, Jisung lets out a choked moan, his grip loosening on Minho.
Minho, ever the quick one, catches on instantly. Sucking in a shaky breath before pulling from Jisung, not without a small whine in protest.
"What is wrong with you both." His voice still edging on confusion, laced with something more. You cant help but glace at Jisung than back at Minho.
"I guess you're gonna have to try and find out, hm?"
The ride home was blurry, calling an uber was the safest bet, none of you truly sober enough to drive.
The ride back felt torturously long, settling on your apartment as it was the closest. Stuck snug between both of the guys felt like heaven and hell, Jisung's leg drumming up and down anxiously, Minho's almost stoic expression making both of you confused and slightly turned on but we dont talk about that.
The feeling of being literally in between both of them makes your brain go haywire, swirling with all of the possibilities of when you get into the apartment, the excitement, the thrill.
Unconsciously you start clenching your thighs together, of course Minho notices, the guy notices everything about you.
The 20 minute drive felt like an hour, the warmth almost unbearable.
Finally when you arrive, you're suddenly thankful of the long walk, mad at the uber feeling like forever but the reality slowly dawning on you.
Not fear per say, just adrenaline finally dropping.
Jisung is no better, suddenly both of your confident acts crumbling under the idea of Minho.
Minho — who has the straightest face, like he's going to a board meeting not a possible friendship altering encounter.
Entering the apartment should have felt relaxing but it didn't, Minho takes in the space briefly before he makes a long stride to you his hands cupping your face kissing you hard.
Instinctively you moan into the kiss, giving him all the control which you can feel the cocky bastard smile into the kiss. Your fingers curl into the loose fabric of his jacket noticing Jisung's presence lingering close by, hearing the familiar sound of his desperate whines.
Minho breaks the kiss suddenly, leaving you to try and chase his lips, the sudden feeling of disappointment is quickly fading when he pulls Jisung closer, tilting the younger boys jaw so he can kiss him, making sure you're watching.
A small gasped moan escapes from your throat, the sight of them making you go insane with need. A moment later the kiss ends, Jisung looking probably just as desperate and pathetic as you.
"Wheres your bedroom?" Minho's voice coming out broken, catching his breath from the kiss with Jisung. You quickly try and regain composer as you walk ahead of him, guiding him and Jisung to your bedroom.
You can barely process it, clothes ending up mindlessly anywhere on the floor, feeling exposed — all of your thoughts quickly silencing when Jisung kisses you, Minho watching right in front of you.
Your fingers curl into Jisung's hair, pulling helplessly on the strands, desperate for more. Jisung was just as needy, feeling his cock hard against your thigh, rutting against it.
"Poor Sungie has been suffering since the bar —" Minho's words suddenly breaking the silence, your lips still brushed against Jisung's, feeling his breathing grow unsteady. "Be a good girl and help our boy — gonna be good for me, kitty?"
As soon as the nickname falls from his lips you're gone, nodding helplessly at him. Your hands dragging over Jisung as Minho helps him lean against the pillows moving next to him, his thumbs grazing over Jisung's nipples, a breathy gasp from him.
Moving to sit between his legs, your hand slides over the plush of his thighs, enjoying the sweet sounds he's making — Jisung whose always been sensitive everywhere basically.
Slowly your fingers drift to his cock — your thumb tracing over his sensitive tip, gliding over the slit, smearing the cum down his cock.
Before Jisung can even make a proper sound Minho's on him, his lips attaching to Jisung's, Minho's tongue gliding over his bottom lip before his tongue meets his.
Your hand glides up his cock, your thumb pressing against his lip, briefly looking up at him before you lick the head.
His shallow moans muffled by Minho, you can feel heat pooling between your legs at the sight, quickly you wrap your lips around his cock, bobbing your head gagging slightly when he bucks up into your mouth, forcing his cock deeper into you.
Before you can process Minho's hand tangles into your hair pulling you off Jisung's cock. His thumb swipes over your bottom lips, collecting all the spit that gathered from sucking Jisung off, pushing his thumb into your mouth, pressing it against your tongue.
Instinctively you suck, moaning around his thumb, Jisung watches with huge eyes, letting out a strangled sound. Minho however looks pleased, pulling his thumb from your mouth, his fingers brushing over your cheek, his lips so close to yours but he doesn't press them against yours yet.
"Lay down for me, kitty." His voice is barely above a whisper, quickly and haphazardly shift besides Jisung, your thigh pressed against his you're sitting so close.
Minho moves slowly in front of you, not hesitantly, calculated, likes he's trying to control the situation and you both to every degree.
His hands press against your knees, parting them — his eyes immediately drifting down to your exposed cunt, your slick coating your pussy, nearly dripping onto the mattress.
"Look at you — all that from watching me and Hannie?" He coos gently, his tone dripping with condescension.
You cant even muster out any words, a small sound escaping from your throat as Minho slips down onto his stomach, his hands perched directly on your thighs to keep you still and spread out for him.
Jisung is just watching this unfold, feeling his cock twitch as the view in front of him. Two of his best friends who he wants so bad — its genuinely his wet dream.
Minho's focused, his eyes trained on your pussy, watching as you clench around nothing — just as you're about to say something he's on you.
His tongue almost exploring, kitten licking over your cunt before licking a long stripe. Your hands instantly go to his hair, anchoring yourself.
His movements are precise, his tongue swiping over your clit teasingly before prodding at your soaked hole.
You're already embarrassingly close, Jisung and Minho can tell, almost as soon as you feel your orgasm building — Minho pulls away.
"What—" You barely even get one word out before Minho is on you, you can feel his tip slide up your cunt making you moan unexpectedly.
"Gonna be a good girl and put a show on for Sungie?" His eyes glace over at Jisung who somehow looks more wrecked than you.
Not really trusting your words you nod — feeling your thighs start to shake with anticipation.
Slowly Minho pushes in — he feels different than Jisung, longer but not as thick. Quickly he bottoms out, his breathing coming out ragged and uneven.
The feeling takes over you, small shaky moans leaving your lips, adjusting to him. Minho swipes his thumb over your perked nipples, distracting you from the stretch. Quickly The sting morphs into pleasure, arching into him as you squirm under his touch.
Jisung's eyes are trained on you, watching as Minho's cock slides in out of your wet cunt, listening to the mixed sounds of the wet sound and your sweet moans. He cant help but touch himself to the sight of you both.
Pressing his thumb directly over his sensitive tip, using the spit you left on him earlier to wet his cock, stroking his throbbing cock to you getting fucked.
Minho's thrusts are slow and deep, fucking into you like he's trying to mark you — and maybe he is.
"Look at you — both of you, acting pathetic after weeks of eye fucking me." Minho spits out, the sudden realisation that he knew. You can only moan in response, his thrusts growing sharper. "You act all innocent and guarded but you just needed me and Jisung to fuck you stupid, huh?" His words mocking you, leaving you to respond but you cant, his cock pistoling inside of you, hitting that gummy shot with insane precision.
Minho doesn't stop — finally getting to fuck you only turns him mean, his filter completely gone as he looks over at Jisung whose fisting his own cock. "What's the matter Sungie? Too busy being a desperate little slut — what, you get off on watching your best friends, fuck — Shit, she's so tight for us Ji, I think she can take both of us one day."
Minho is talking nonsense at this point, his head clouded with the feeling of your snug walls milking his cock.
Jisung is a pathetic moaning mess — everything is too much, your orgasm is building fast — the feeling oh Minho pounding into your sopping cunt, Jisung's moans echoing through the room mixed with yours.
Jisung can tell — the slight shift of your actions and knowing you all too well. His movements dont stop, reaching over to you — crashing his lips onto yours, swallowing all your sweet moans.
"Come on Hannie — you gonna cum for us?" Minho's voice grows even more ragged, shifting your leg over his arm to fuck you even deeper.
Jisung moans into your mouth, his hand twisting around his cock faster, his thumb swiping over the slit before letting out a silent cry, cumming hard.
"You wanna cum too, kitty? Wanna cum with Sungie — shit, so good for me go on, cum for me angel." Minho's thrusts grow sloppy, his own orgasm creeping up on him, the feeling of your tight walls sucking him in while Jisung is moaning his name.
Minho's words break you, spasming around him as your orgasm crashes over you — moaning desperately into Jisung's mouth, clawing into the sheet — his hair, anything as you ride out your orgasm.
Minho cums at the feeling of you cumming around his cock — his grip on your thighs tightening — letting out a string of groans as he fucks you through your orgasms filling you up — fucking his cum back into you.
Everything slows, everyone's senses dial down, the highs slowly fading. Minho pulls out slowly, watching as your cunt drips with the mixture of your cum.
Minho looks over at Jisung who is also looking at your glistening pussy, his eyes drifting to notice Jisung's cock, which is already half hard again.
"So desperate for our girl still, hm?" A cat like smirk forms on Minho's lips, teasing Jisung. "Wanna taste of her? Think you can handle it Ji?"
Jisung quickly perks up, a small whine escaping at the thought, quickly shifting to take Minho's spot between your legs, diving straight in.
Jisung quickly laps up all of yours and Minho's cum, moaning at the taste, his hips grinding into the mattress.
His tongue gliding over your clit, sucking it hard, moaning against your pussy.
Already so overstimulated from your previous orgasm, this one comes fast and hard — your thighs clenching around Jisung's head.
Jisung only moans at your thighs nearly crushing his head — his ruts into the bed only growing more desperate and needy.
Minho is watching closely, his eyes never straying from you and Jisung, his lips parted from how heavy he's breathing, almost memorised by you both.
Your orgasm comes crashing over you as Jisung sucks on your clit, moaning helplessly into your cunt.
Jisung sucks you through your orgasm, his own building fast, moaning pathetically into your pussy, mumbling sweet praises, the friction between his bare cock and the sheets forcing his own orgasm out of him.
Moments pass — Jisung hesitantly leaves your cunt, noticing how you twitched and probably were sore, resting his head on your thigh, catching his own mess.
Before you can realise Minho left the room, coming back quickly, his boxers back on as he kneels onto the mattress.
Silently helping you both put some clothes on, Minho puts Jisung's shirt on you while helping slide Jisung's boxers on. Handing both of you a glass of water, sitting in front of you, his eyes never leaving yours — unable to read what he's thinking.
Once Jisung basically chugs his drink, putting the glass onto the bedside table, he buries into your side, you take note of the small smile creeping up onto Minho's lips.
While buried into your side you play with his hair, brushing strands stuck to his forehead from his face when he mumbles into your shoulder.
“Kim Da-hee, whatever it is, spill it out! I can see gears turning in your head to lie to my face! You better not! I know very well when you lie,” she threatened, her voice dropping low.
A nervous laugh escaped me “Whoa, full government name? Then this must be serious…”
“What do you think, Da-Hee? Is it serious?” she fires back, her tone serious.
“Okay, okay, but promise not to judge me too harshly, yeah?” She nodded in reply.
“Remember the photos you sent me of SKZ’s performance yesterday? The one you took mid-dancing?” I asked her, my fingers automatically going to my sweater’s sleeves and pulling it.
“Yeah, of course i did!! Those were the best shots I got? Why? Did it feel too real like you were there watching them in real life? You should thank my camera!”S She went on bragging about it. Then she stops mid-sentence, “wait, that’s not why…sorry I got carried away..What did you find?” She asks instead.
I took a shuddering breath, “It, was too clear” I whispered, my eyes cast low. My fingers then moved to the quiet reminder my soulmate wrote on my hand. “Ji young-ah, the one photo of Minho, it looks like-” my voice cracked, and I cleared my throat to try again.
Instead, I took out my tablet and swapped to the picture that gave me the existential crisis this morning before school. " Young’ah, look..” I ordered her as I flipped the camera on my phone and zoomed in on the chest, where the black shirt moved a bit during the performance.
She was silent for a whole minute, before I could tell her to forget it, she started, " Emms, that’s what I think it is right? Look at tha-” I interrupted her before she could complete it.
“Nope, it’s not, I am soo sure it’s not. I spend half an hour in the ungodly hour of the morning trying to make sense of it, you know, it can be a lightning, or a thread, or even a piece of jewellery, you know? Or it could even be a tattoo, just not mine. I don’t think it is…” I trailed off, my voice getting lower as I finished telling her.
“But..?” she prompted me to continue. She knew that was not it; there is something more to it. She knew me for the longest time, she knows about my bonds, my soulmates, the tattoo, the placement, the font, the exact curve because of the hours we both spent in our university dorm trying to research our soulbonds. I am so sure we visited pretty much the entire site that existed back then just to satisfy our curiosity.
“It’s just that, it felt soo real, like for a second I really thought it was him, you know,” I whispered to her. “I am just so stupid, I literally feel like those crazy fans trying to project my own delusion and fantasies onto an idol.”
“Emma, it’s valid to feel like that. I know you, hell, I have known you since nineteen, I know the desperation you have to find him, the only bond you don’t know. It’s not stupid at all.” She reassured me. “And believe me if I ever find an idol with the same mark as mine, I will go crazy”
“Yea?”
“Yup, I definitely will for sure! Now there was something else too. spill.”
At that question, I told her about my entire evening after returning from school, the ice cream in this weather to the lady who was a shaman. By the time I finished it, her jaw was on the floor, and her eyes widened.
I snorted at her reaction before calling her name twice to bring her back to reality.
“That is worse than the morning one! What the heck, man? OLD SOUL? What are you? huhh…Unbelievable.. People these days say anything regardless of their status,” she complained very loudly.
I smiled at her, my mood lifting completely at her attitude towards it. From the comforting words of my soulmate to Ji Young’s insights, I felt calmer than I had been for a long time.
“By the way, Mama Park called for dinner next week at her place,” I informed her. “She told me to bring you with me”
“Oh, nice! But as much as I love her gigantic house and 5-star food, I can’t return to Korea for that reason. Tell her thank you and sorry on my behalf.” She chuckled.
“I sure will”
Mama Park, Grandma Park, my mother’s mother, who lives in Busan and conducts dinner almost every month for her kids and grandkids. Well its called a dinner, but we are expected to reach there before 8 in the morning, not to help but bond with our cousins. I pulled along Ji- young with me for the first dinner here without my mother after she left for Britain, where my dad and my siblings are, and she has been going to almost all dinners with me. And now, grandmother looks forward to meeting her, along with me. We started calling her Mama Park because of her kind nature to take in anyone who tags along with the grandkids. The nickname started as a joke, but now it has stuck to her.
From there onwards, the conversation took a lighter turn. We talked about her upcoming work there in Japan, visiting potential film locations, booking the places, and filming. She said she will be back within two weeks for Christmas and the New Year after finishing the booking and location hunting, and leave by mid-January with the actors to film the series. By the time the call ended, I had already applied for a long-awaited leave from school for two days. Since I already finished drafting the question papers, I feel better about taking a leave not guilty like before.
After the call, I made some food by myself from scratch as a form of therapy, the kind of therapy that ain’t that expensive but it did help me to clear my mind further. I completed the movie that was paused when Ji Young called. I did my skin care routine, taking all the time in the world, and also took a bunch of vitamins, praying that there isn’t any random pain on my body tomorrow.
————————————————————————————————————————
Since I applied for leave on Thursday and Friday and then the weekend, I had all the time in the world. I woke up late; instead of waking up at 6 to get ready for school, I woke up past nine, had a late breakfast, and caught up with my sisters and brother living away. Then I went out for lunch in a restaurant I had wanted to try for a long time. In the evening, I decided to go shopping for new clothes to wear to school and for some formal wear, knowing that my cousins’ weddings will be lining up in the next few months, and a few gifts for Christmas.
I left the shopping mall with a very satisfied heart and a noticeable dent in my bank account. It’s not like I have anything else to spend on, I thought as I went to a bakery to buy a cake just because I can and want to.
I returned home satisfied and fully ready for bed. And for the next three days, I took my time grading essays, replying to students’ messages about the exams, and helping my family organize a menu for next week’s dinner. I also made sure to update both my soulmates about the things that went down on my four-day leave. We took our time talking about everything and nothing at the same time. It was a comforting and much-needed break.
In the next few days leading up to my dinner at Mama Park’s house, I felt like a normal person again. Like the reliable Ms Kim, who teaches English again, not the one who was on the verge of breaking down over photos and shaman’s tales. The very uneventful week was very much needed after the confusing and overwhelming days of the past week. I didn’t know I would miss the students’ chatter this much after not hearing it during the past four-day break. I spent the week revising the chapters for exams, planning for the next term, and tutoring the students who needed an extra hand in their studies. It was a mundane week, but it was mine, and I grew to love it.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was ready for a reset at Mama Park’s mansion, which, in her words, is a humble home. I made sure to finish up the usual work I do during the weekend, packed an overnight bag with a mandatory swimsuit I was asked to pack by my cousins to swim in the heated pool there. I went to bed extra early to wake up at an ungodly hour to travel to Busan.
I went to the train station around 5:30 am with a thermal of coffee, hoping to make it before the ‘8 am deadline. I slept on the two-hour travel there, hoping that it would refill my energy to socialize well enough. I hopped on the taxi to the house after disembarking the train. As the taxi rolled over to the very big ‘humble home,’ it was almost 5 minutes past eight. I paid the driver and stood in front of the door waiting for it to open when I heard a loud crash and some laughing.
‘It looks like the twins are at it again’ I thought with a smile that wipped out the moment I was tackled into a hug by Min-woo, my youngest aunt’s son, who is in college.
“Get off, you overgrown kid, I can’t handle your weight!!” I struggled to get him of me and failed miserably. He laughed at it and let me in the house. The house or mansion was filled with all the kids from my mom’s side. Dinner hosted by Mama Park was a big deal after all. I moved to the living room to find half of the cousins there. I was called out the moment I was spotted.
“You are six minutes and forty five seconds late, Da hee!” Ha-joon yelled at me from the couch he seems to be very comfortable.
“Are you keeping a count of the seconds too, oppa?” I asked as I scanned the room for my grandmother.
“Its not every day Ms Kim is late. Today must be special. Wh-” the question was interrupted by a groan from him, looking back to the couch, I found his twin sister, Ha-eun, who smacked his head with a pillow.
“Ha joon, be nice!” She scolded him. It was no surprise to me. Even at the ripe of age of 26, they seem not to have let go of the habit of quarreling like children.
“Da hee!! You are here my girl! At last, I missed you so much!” I looked at the sound and found Grandma Lee coming with open arms. I entered her arms and hugged her tightly, ‘gosh, I really need to visit here more often,’ I thought
“I missed you too, Grandma..” I was pulled away from the hug, and she told me, “Go and tell your Mama Park you are here; she has been nagging my ear off thinking you are lost somewhere.”
“OH..Then i will go right now” I replied and went inside the kitchen to find my other grandmother. My grandfather has two soulmates, Grandma Park and Grandma Lee but the twist was they both found each other first before grandpa did. It was a funny story to hear about their earlier life from them, hear about their earlier life from them. Then they had six kids together. Over those years, the generational lines blurred, and now no one really talks about who is whose kid anymore or cousins; it’s just the whole family with lots of kids.
“Grandma park!! Guess who it is? It’s me!!” I yelled as I entered a very large kitchen there. The kitchen was always filled with chefs, but on special days, Grandma Park likes to observe the cooking and help out there.
“Da Hee! You are here! Thank god! I thought you were lost somewhere. I told you so many times I will send you our driver to fetch you,” she said as she held me at arm’s length, looking over me, no doubt checking if I lost the weight she worked hard to put on me by feeding me here.
“Mama Park, I don’t need drivers coming to pick me up you know? I am not a kid anymore! Besides, it was just a train ride over here. Why waste the money on drivers?” I questioned her as she turned around to call a chef over.
“You are still a kid in my eyes. Besides, we already pay those drivers a lot, so it’s not a waste to send them to fetch you.. I hope you didn’t eat breakfast yet,” She said that to me and turned to the chef, " make some tea and bring it with biscuits to the sitting room, please.”
After catching up with Grandma Park about Mom and my siblings over a cup of tea, about half an hour later.We were called over for breakfast. I was hit by the smell of the food they cooked up in the kitchen. Entering the living room, I found that the entire table was neatly arranged and filled with food that would leave you stuffed for a while.
My uncles and aunts were still coming in from the dining room, greeting everyone already there. I got head pats from uncles and, aunts kissed me on the cheeks before sitting.
“Oh look who is here, Hyun Jae! Our savior!!” Jae Hyun cheered as he entered the area, calling out to his younger twin brother who looked dead on his feet.
“Hello Jae Hyun, and you too Hyun Jae” I waved at them. Hyun jae mumbled in reply before plopping down on the chair, faceplanting on the table. Jae Hyun, on the other hand, came over to me and hugged me. It was suspicious; he was never the one for any form of affection.
“hello noona dear”
“Hello Jae, what do you need?” I asked him.
He let out a scandalous gasp at that, “Wow, now you think I only hug you when I need something? You are misplacing your judgment here, you know!” he pouts.
“No Jae, I do not know how the questions will come for exams, you have to study everything,” I told him.
His pout intensified at that. “How do you know I was going to ask about that? But can’t you help me?”
“What else can a high schooler like you even ask for? I can help you by assigning worksheets. Do you want some?” I questioned him. At that, he quietly mumbled “no need” before going back to his seat near his brother. His brother Hyun-Jae, in turn, gave a condescending pat on his back.
“Hello Emaline, how are you doing?” Turning around, I came face to face with Min Jun. Out of all fourteen cousins, he was the only one who still called me by my English name. He was a professor in Seoul National University, teaching history.
“Hi oppa, you look like you could use some sleep,” I commented. He looks shagged. His hairs out of place from his usual combed and still in his pajamas.
“I told him a hundred times to go to sleep earlier, but he was petty and wanted to win against the twins,” Grandma Lee pointed out. That explains Min jun’s and Hyun Jae’s zombie-like condition. They both are a bit too competitive when it comes to literally anything. Although Hyun Jae is way younger than Min Jun by over a decade, they still compete as if that age gap doesn’t exist. Sighing at Grandma Lee’s explanation, Min Jun took the seat next to me.
" At least tell me you won at last,” I whispered to him, and in turn, I got a glare. Holding my laughter, I turned to my food, waiting for everyone to sit. Min Jun definitely lost. I could understand that from the glare he cast at me.
My grandfather arrived next from his morning walk, taking time to greet everyone properly, and he also sat at the table, and we started to eat.
“Do you have some news to share, Da hee?” Min-Jun asks while eating. I took my time thinking about what news he could be implying.
" News about what? About Ji Young landing on a new drama?”
“We heard about that from grandma”. That explains why they aren’t all over me asking why she isn’t here today. He cuts in before I could ask him what other news are there to tell him.
“You know about your soulmates…” he lowered his voice. “Did you not meet them?” he asks,his voice unmistakably curious.
“Oppa, I didn’t meet them. Why?” I questioned back, my hand tensing around the chopstick I was holding. My thought went back almost two weeks to the performance and red carpet moment, the ones I was able to forget until he brought the topic back.
“Then there is something else bothering you. You even took an unexpected leave from school for Thursday and Friday.” He explains as his eyes narrow down at me. A cold shiver went down my spine from the questioning. Instead of explaining, I fired back,
“Are you stalking me or something? How did you know I took leave?” The question was supposed to be in a joking tone, but my voice got sharper and more defensive. If Min-Jun noticed the shift in my tone, he didn’t mention it.
He took a sip of the soup in front of him, motioning me to do the same before answering, “I came to visit you at your school on Friday. I had a meeting nearby, but I heard you weren’t there.”
“Oh, that explains. You should have visited my home, it was only like a ten minute drive from school.” He waves me off.
“I was just passing by, besides, I knew we were going to meet here today, so I didn’t bother disturbing you on your day off.” I hummed back in reply and focused on my meals. The two sets of twins were arguing passionately about the best movie to watch later today and a tired aunt was trying to stop them from yelling over the food.
“And did you know the university was conducting a study into soulmates and their bonds?” He asked suddenly out of nowhere. I raised my eyebrow at the question. Many people don’t research more into that because they believe that it is a blessing and nothing is worth a scientific explanation.
“Yeah, you did tell me that last time. Is the research going well?”
“We are considering the possibility of the soulmates connecting through time..” At that, my heart dropped to my stomach, and I felt like I was going to hurl the food that was in my stomach. I felt a chill go up my spine. I had to grip my spoon tightly to not drop it.
" Oppa, what do you mean by that?” I inquired, trying to make my voice steady and not shake too much to raise any concerns.
“Well, it’s just a talk, honestly. Like if the soulmates are connected in this life as it was in the past. That past life, if that exists….”
